January 1, 2020 • 32 mins
It’s part two of our year-end Unearthed! Today, we have some longtime listener favorites, including edibles and potables, Otzi, and exhumations. And some other stuff – beginning with several studies about what exactly caused the Neanderthals to die out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
It's part two of our year en Unearthed. This time
we have some of our long time listener favorites. I
(00:23):
mean we did last time too, but some particular favorites
this time, including the edibles and potables, some utsy stuff,
and the exclamations. We have some of the things too,
and we will kick it off with several different studies
that we're all looking at exactly what caused the Neanderthals
to die out. Humans and Neanderthals coexisted on the European
continent for at least five thousand years before the human
(00:45):
population started to outstrip the Neanderthals, and after that, of course,
the Neanderthals eventually became extinct. Over the last few months,
we have heard about a few different papers trying to
get to the bottom of exactly what happened. So according
to researchers from Japan and Italy, it might be because
humans figured out how to use projectile weapons, including spear
(01:07):
throwers and bows and arrows. They found evidence that humans
might have used these kinds of weapons between forty and
forty five thousand years ago, which is twenty thousand years
earlier than previously thought. So they thought that this could
have given humans an edge over Neanderthals, who hadn't developed
that same technology. However, we should note that in a
(01:28):
previous installment of On Earth, we talked about research that
suggested that Neanderthal hunting spears could have been used as
throwing weapons. That particular study included replicas of three hundred
thousand year old javelins, much older than the forty forty
five thousand years in this research. And then for a
completely different idea, maybe the cause was chronic ear infections.
(01:53):
This hypothesis comes from a team of head and neck
anatomists who published a paper called Reconstructing the Neanderthal you
stayction Tube New Insights on Disease, susceptibility, fitness, cost and Extinction.
They published that in the Journal of the Anatomical Record.
In the words of Samuel Marquez, PhD. Quote it may
sound far fetched, but when we for the first time
(02:15):
reconstructed the Eustachian tubes of Neanderthals, we discovered that they
are remarkably similar to those of human infants. Middle ear
infections are nearly ubiquitous among infants because the flat angle
of an infant's eustation tubes is prone to retain the
tightest media. Bacteria that caused these infections the same flat
angle we found in the Andanderthals. So most human children
(02:38):
literally outgrow with these infections. As they get bigger, there
ustation tubes get longer and more sharply angled so that
their ears can drain better. But Neanderthal's eustation tubes remained
flat insu adulthood, making it more likely that they might
continue to have recurring or chronic infections, and apart from
the risk of death from a really acute infection, this
(02:59):
would have just life harder for Neanderthals, especially as they
were competing with humans for resources. Just it Gaze, You're
suddenly now as curious as Tracy was while she was
doing this research. The US station tube is named after
sixteenth century anatomist Bartolomeo Eustacy, and we're still not done
with this whole Neanderthal question. According to a paper by
(03:20):
scientists from Stanford which was published in the journal Nature Communications,
the cause might have been infectious diseases, not ear infections.
Using mathematical models, they concluded that humans and Neanderthals didn't
interact very much for the first centuries of their mutual
existence because they each carried and were resistant to different diseases.
(03:42):
So they suggested that each population was encircled by a
quote invisible disease barrier. But at some point humans and
Neanderthals started interbreeding. We know that for sure, and the
team behind this research suggests that the children of these
pairings may have had immunity to diseases from both groups,
tipping precarious balance that had lasted up until then. So
(04:03):
that led them to the question, why then did humans
eventually get the upper hand rather than Neanderthals if their
offspring had immunity to both sets of diseases, And the
answer might have been that there were more and deadlier
diseases in tropical areas where humans originated than there were
farther north into Europe and Asia, so it was a
(04:23):
lot easier for humans to move north and survive than
it was for Neanderthals to try to move south into
tropical Africa. And in our last study that we're talking
about on this subject, Maybe it was inbreeding. A team
from Indovin University of Technology the Netherlands used mathematical modeling
to study the effects of inbreeding on Neanderthal populations. Their
(04:45):
research suggests that inbreeding alone was not enough to explain
the extinction of the Neanderthals, but small populations of a
species are known to experience something called alley effects. Basically,
a very small population is just not as genetically fit
as a larger one, and in breeding and Alley effects
combined could have caused the Neanderthals to go extinct over
(05:07):
about a ten thousand year period. So the suggestion here
is that the introduction of humans to an area might
have influenced the Neanderthal behavior just enough to encourage more
inbreeding in a population that was already pretty small. But
they didn't think it was enough to say that human
activity conclusively caused Neanderthal's extinction, and the words of the
(05:28):
papers authors quote, did Neanderthals disappear because of us? No?
This study suggests the species demise might have been due
merely to a stroke of bad demographic luck. And now
we're moving on to one of my favorite subjects, clothing
and accessories. Excavations under tarbot Old Parish Church and the
Scottish Highlands have unearthed a man's ankle boots, complete with buckles,
(05:51):
and the thick hose that he wore with them. The
find is about six hundred years old and, in the
words of Cecily Spall of field Work Archaeology Services quote
the man had been put in a coffin wearing these clothes,
but the coffin at some point collapsed and everything concertinaed.
I wanted to have this quote in there specifically because
the description of everything concertina delighted me. It's not a
(06:15):
description I think we use as often in the US.
So because this collapse sealed this clothing off from oxygen,
it's pretty well preserved, with visible wear and tear that
seems to have come from the garment's use and not
from the collapse of the coffin or the decomposition of
the material over time. You can even see some of
this person's leg hair caught in the hose. A metal
(06:37):
detectorist in Estonia unearthed a seventeen hundred year old sacrificial
site that included a gold bracelet, crossbow, brooches, belt plaques
and silver plates. The bracelet in particular is noteworthy. It
might actually be a caller and it probably dates back
to the third century. An archaeological team came to the
site for further study of this discovery, with archaeologist Marika
(07:01):
Magid noting that gold is a rare find and sights
of this age in Estonia and a piece this large
and heavy is particularly rare. Magic told a news broadcast quote,
one can say that this is likely the most valuable
single find in the material sense to be unearthed in Estonia.
Uh this find has been sent to a museum. A
(07:22):
Dutch art detective has recovered a ring connected to Oscar
Wilde that was stolen during a burglary at Maudlin College
in two thousand two. The ring and two medals had
been stolen in the same incident, and after the culprit,
even Andrews, was caught, he said that he had sold
the ring to a scrap dealer. So after this was found,
it was returned to the college, which home burser Mark
(07:44):
Blandford Baker said he had given up hope of ever
seeing again like once the culprit said that he had
sold the stuff to a scrap dealer. People were like well,
that's definitely gone. This ring's history a bit of it.
In eighteen seventy six, Wild and his friend Reginald Harding
had given the ring to their friend William Ward. All
three of these men were friends while taking classes at
(08:05):
the college, and then the ring later became part of
the college's collection of Wild memorabilia. Archaeologists in China have
used enzyme linked immunosorb and assay to confirm the fibers
found in burial urns there are silk fabrics, making them
the world's oldest known silk They date back to between
fifty three hundred and fifty five hundred years ago, and
(08:26):
they suggest that silk making and dying techniques were relatively
refined by that point, meaning that people had first started
making silk well before that. Previously, the oldest known silk
fibers were from between forty two hundred and forty four
hundred years old. And to be clear, I put this
under clothing because it was the most related category, but
it wasn't actually clothing. The silk was part of the
(08:48):
material that had been used to wrap the dead, is
sort of postmortem clothing. You could also not exactly clothing
or at least not always close thing. Researchers have studied
twelve hundred beads made from ostrich eggshell to try to
spot patterns and how they might reflect social changes that
(09:08):
took place on the African continent thousands of years ago.
These beads came from thirty different sites, and their styles
and shapes seemed to shift when a new influence comes
into an area. In the words of lead author Jennifer Miller, quote,
these beads are symbols that were made by hunter gatherers
from both regions for more than forty thousand years, So
changes or lack thereof in these symbols tells us how
(09:31):
these communities responded to cultural contact and economic change. So
to expand on that, people in Africa started making these
beads at least fifty thousand years ago, and according to
previous research, the beads tended to get bigger when hurting
people moved into a region that had been previously inhabited
just by foragers. This new research suggests that the pattern
(09:54):
isn't that straightforward. In southern Africa, new styles of beads
followed evidence of the reduction of hurting, but previous bead
styles didn't go away, but in Eastern Africa, bead style
stayed the same even after hurting was introduced to an area.
This was the first study of bead patterns specifically in
Eastern Africa, and it's possible that the bead makers there
(10:16):
just weren't influenced by the newcomers, or it's possible that
the hurting people who moved into that area already had
a similar bead making style, so changes weren't as a parent.
Archaeologists from the University of Copenhagen have published a paper
in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports detailing three human
teeth that appear to have been used as jewelry, and
(10:37):
those teeth were found in Catali, which also came up
in our Autumn Unearthed. So the teeth are about eighty
five hundred years old and they had been drilled with
the same sorts of micro drills that were used to
make beads out of stones or animal bones. They were
also worn in a way that suggests that they had
been used as jewelry or something similar for quite some time.
(10:57):
The teeths chewing surfaces suggests did that they had belonged
to a mature adult, and so The suggestion was that
they were probably removed either after someone died or from
a skull of a person who had died quite some
time before that. After we take a quick sponsor break,
we're going to move on to another big favorite, edibles
and potables. Okay for our edibles and potables this time around.
(11:25):
A team of scientists at the University of Bristol has
reported the earliest known evidence of baby feeding bottles, or
at least their basic equivalent. These are small clay vessels
dating back to about five thousand BC. They're small enough
for a baby to hold, and they have this little
spout at the bottom that a baby could suck milk from.
Some of these vessels are shaped like imaginary animals, which
(11:48):
suggested to the team that they might be meant for children,
but they also noted that they could have been used
to feed adults who were very ill or were otherwise
unable to eat solid food. The team looked at three
specific examples that have been found in the graves of
children and tested them, and they contained residues from the
milk of domesticated room and animals like cows and the
(12:09):
words of Dr Julie Dunn from the University of Bristol,
who was the lead author of the paper published on
the spine that was published in the journal Nature, quote
similar vessels, although rare, do appear in other prehistoric cultures,
such as Rome and ancient Greece across the world. Ideally,
we'd like to carry out a larger geographic study and
investigate whether they served the same purpose. Researchers studying a
(12:33):
cave near Tel Aviv have found evidence that Paleolithic people
saved animal bones for up to nine weeks so that
they could have the marrow as a food source later on,
comparing it to being like opening up a can of soup.
They had already known that bone marrow was an important
source of nutrition in Paleolithic diets, but they had thought
that food was scarce enough that people had to eat
(12:53):
whatever they had as soon as they had it. The
team concluded that these bones were preserved rather than immediately
bro can open for their marrow because of evidence of
chopping marks that did not match up with butchering methods
that were known to be used with fresh meat. And
this is the earliest known evidence of people basically using
bones for food storage purposes rather than consuming what was inside.
(13:14):
Them immediately. A team in Puerto Rico has examined twenty
of fossilized clam shells to try to determine how the
pre aarrowalk population of the island prepared them for eating.
Their analysis of these shells suggest that they were cooked
at more than one hundred degrees celsius, which is the
boiling point of water, but less than two hundred degrees,
(13:35):
concluding that they were cooked over a flame rather than boiled.
The study said barbecued, but we know from our recent
barbecue live show people have a lot of opinions on
whether that would be the correct word in this situation. Yeah.
This team also noted that this fine provides some circumstantial
evidence about whether pottery was widely used on the island,
(13:55):
because you would need some pottery vessels in order to
be able to boil claim. A newly published book has
detailed the finding of an excavation at berry Fields in Buckinghamshire, England.
The excavation took place between two thousand seven and twenty six.
One interesting find a bread basket along with the only
intact chickens egg from Roman Britain. So this egg was
(14:18):
actually one of four that were found at the site,
but the other three broke, which was still a very
stinky experience. According to the archaeologists on the scene, It's
possible that the bread basket and the bread that it
presumably contained, as well as the eggs, might have been
thrown into this pit sometime after the late third century.
(14:39):
That was something that people did for good luck or
as part of a religious ritual. All I can think
of is Templeton the rat now Um. The book is
called berry Fields Iron Age Settlement and a Roman bridge
Field System and Settlement along Ackman Street near Fleet Marston, Buckinghamshire,
and it is published by Oxford Archaeology. So this last
(15:00):
one isn't exactly edible, but it was the best place
to put it. Researchers at the University of Copenagen have
managed to sequence an entire ancient genome from a fifty
seven hundred year old piece of birch pitch that was
used as chewing gum. Basically we've talked about chewing gum
finds before. They described this as the first time that
an entire ancient genome has been extracted from something that
(15:23):
was not bone. This piece of pitch was found in
southern Denmark, and in addition to the human DNA that
it contained, it also had traces of plant and animal
DNA that were probably part of that person's diet, as
well as DNA from the microbes in their mouth. We
have a few examples of items being returned or repatriated
(15:44):
to their place or culture of origin. Next, the United
States Department of Homeland Security returned the head of a
marble statue to Libya in October. In the US and
Libya had signed an agreement that imposed restrictions on the
import of of being cultural property to the United States,
and then this head had been smuggled into the US
and violation of that agreement. This was a returned to
(16:06):
the Libyan embassy in Washington, d C. When living authorities
said it would be returned to its historical location. Cambridge
University College is returning a statute that was looted from Nigeria.
The bronze statue of a Cockerell was removed from Nigeria,
then the Kingdom of Benin in eighteen ninety seven, and
then it was given to the college by a student's father.
(16:27):
This is one of many bronzes that were taken from
Benin and are now in British museums and universities. There's
a whole effort that I just saw an article about
after sending like this outline was done. It was done,
it was sent finished about a whole effort uh in
in Britain to try to track down other artifacts that
(16:49):
should be returned to Nigeria. And then, in similar news,
France has returned to nineteenth century saber to Senegal. The
French had seized this sword in eighteen ninety three and
then placed it in the collection of Paris's Army Museum.
The saber initially belonged to Omar said Utal and was
confiscated from his son. This was part of an effort
(17:10):
announced last year in which France would return items of
African cultural heritage within five years, with French President Emmanuel
Macron saying quote, I cannot accept that a large part
of cultural heritage from several African countries is in France.
There are historical explanations for that, but there are no
valid justifications that are durable and unconditional. African heritage can't
(17:33):
just be in European private collections and museums. But progress
on actually fulfilling this whole plan has actually been slow
as French lawmakers have tried to hash out the legal
and logistical details. What's next bit isn't exactly a repatriation,
but it has some of the same themes. We have
talked a lot in our Unearthed episodes and other times
(17:55):
about discoveries that have come from DNA analysis on ancient
human remains, and the rise of these kinds of studies
has brought up some ethical questions. Research that involves the
DNA of living people is supposed to be conducted following
ethical rules and guidelines based on the idea that people
should have a right to privacy when it comes to
(18:15):
their own health information and their own DNA, but ancient
DNA can be in kind of a gray area. And
to be clear, this is not just a theoretical question
of what rights long dead ancient people should have over
their own DNA. These results of these studies can have
huge cultural and political implications for people living today, especially
(18:36):
indigenous people and other ethnic minorities. So the National Science
Foundation has awarded a three hundred fifty thousand, eight hundred
eighty two dollar collaborative grant to the University of Connecticut,
the Denver Museum of Nature, and science and partners across
the United States, Canada, and Europe to study this question.
This team that's being assembled plans to involve in digital
(19:00):
this leaders, in these conversations, and to try to establish
standards for this research that are respectful of indigenous communities
and that encourage collaboration among the researchers doing the work
with the people who that work might affect. In July,
we talked about Greece's demand for the Parthenon marbles to
be returned from the British Museum, and there has been
(19:21):
a lot more back and forth about that since then,
so stay tuned for a future episode of the podcast
on that one. We hope it's in the works. I
think at this point it's it's it's moved from we
hope to pretty likely. Over just the last twenty four hours,
we have some musy news. As almost always, various researchers
(19:41):
have been studying the human intestinal microbiome and how that
microbiome might be connected to various diseases and conditions. So
several studies have connected things like processed foods at an
increased use of antibiotics, various hygiene practices, and other behaviors
all grouped under the da of a Western lifestyle. So
(20:02):
studies have connected that Western lifestyle to changes in the microbiome,
and these changes in the microbiome have been correlated with
a rise in things like autoimmune disorders, allergies, and gastro
intestinal diseases. A paper published in the journal Cell, Host
and Microbe examined the gut microbes of people across multiple continents.
(20:25):
They specifically looked at the provatelecopri complex, which includes four
different clades and is associated with a number of health concerns.
The team found that this bacteria was present in about
thirty of people with more Western lifestyles and about nine
percent of people described as having non Western lifestyles. Yeah,
the incredibly basic idea is that in a lot of
(20:46):
cases there seems to be a correlation, not necessarily causation,
between a lack of these bacteria and various health conditions.
So then these results were compared to ancient microbiomes include
both fossilized human poop and Lutsie's microbiome. Leutsy, of course,
did not have a Western lifestyle at all, and his
(21:08):
microbiome showed evidence of three of the four clades of
this bacterium. In other Utsy News, researchers at the University
of Glasgow and the University of Innsbruck have been trying
to identify all the mosses and live rewards that were
found around Utsie's remains. These plants are classified as briaphites,
and there are thousands of fragments of briaphite in the
(21:31):
ice that was around Dutsie's body. Although only twenty three
species of bria Phites live in the area today, there
are at least seventy five species from immediately around Utsie's
remains and from his clothing gear and his gut. And
we are going to take one more quick sponsor break
before we get to the rest of our unearthed. Okay,
(21:58):
we've already talked in these two episodes about various findings
that came from burial sites or the grave goods in
them in some way. For our next few finds, the
connection to burials is the thing that they have in common. First,
a team studying a four thousand year old burial site
off the coast of the U s State of Georgia
(22:18):
have said that it shows evidence of really long ranging
relationships among hunter gatherer people's during North America's Woodland period.
What they found at the ancient shell pit was a
burial site that had a lot in common with funerary
practices of people living in the Great Lakes area at
about the same time. In the words of Matthew Sanger,
who led the research team, quote, our excavations revealed remarkable
(22:42):
parallels between the shell Ring in the coastal Southeast and
in broadly contemporaneous sites in the Great Lakes, including the
use of cremation to handle the dead, cremating the dead
in an area separate from where the bones were eventually buried,
the use of copper as a burial item, the burial
of multiple people at the same time, and the use
of ochre in the burial. Not only are these practices
(23:05):
very similar, our analyzes clearly showed that the copper found
at the shell Ring originated in the Great Lakes and
was therefore traded between the two regions. Notably, all of
these practices are rare or entirely absent from the regions
between the Great Lakes and the Southeast, which suggests that
there was not some sort of general diffusion of traditions,
(23:26):
but rather a direct transplant. Basically, the suggests that the
people living in eastern North America four thousand years ago
weren't necessarily sticking to relatively isolated pockets of territory. They
may have traveled very long distances and had interactions that
stretched across much of the eastern half of the continent.
The paper that they published on this was called Great
(23:46):
Lakes Copper and Shared Mortuary Practices on the Atlantic Coast
Implications for long distance exchange during the Late Archaic, and
it was published in the journal American Antiquity. In other news,
A Roman Catholic church and settle Check rep Public is
nicknamed the Bone Church because it houses the bones of
somewhere between forty thousand and seventy thousand people in an ossuary.
(24:08):
Some of these bones are stacked and others are arranged
into formations, and these are the remains of people who
died of plague in the mid fourteenth century, as well
as in the Hussite Wars that followed. An ongoing restoration
project at the church has also involved excavation in the area,
and during that time researchers have found two mass graves,
(24:29):
one from a thirteen eighteen famine and one from atty
eight plague. Together, this represents another twelve hundred skeletons moving on.
The Aquita Museum in Bordeaux, France, is on the site
of what was once a convent, and in November they
announced that a tomb in the museum's basement might contain
the remains of sixteenth century Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne,
(24:53):
who died in fifteen ninety two and whose body's location
hasn't been totally clear because it was moved several times
after his death, Although there is still work to be done,
the wooden coffin in the tomb does have Montagna written
on it in large brown letters. It does seem like
a clue maybe, I mean, it could be some other Montagna,
(25:15):
or somebody who loved Montagna, or someone who wanted to
confuse us all in the future. In October, a team
in Norway found an unusual boat burial. Now, boat burials
on their own are not unheard of. There have been
several of them found over the last couple of years
(25:36):
that I've heard about. But in this case, the same
grave site contains the remains of two people who died
and were buried about a hundred years apart. The grave
site is at a Viking age farm. The older burial
is described as a man buried with weapons in a
boat between nine and ten ms long in the eighth century.
Then in the ninth century, a woman was buried in
(25:58):
address fashioned with shell shaped brooches, along with a crucifix
shaped brooch, a pearl necklace, scissors, a spindle whirl and
a cow's head. She was also placed in a boat,
this one seven or eight meters long. For her burial,
the older grave was excavated and she and her boat
were placed into the boat that was already there, along
with the body that was already in it. So this
(26:21):
is not the only double boat burial that was ever found,
but it's a rare enough occurrence that archaeologist Raymond Savage,
who was the project manager for this excavation, said that
he had never heard of the practice before. He did
later learn of other examples that had been found in
another part of Norway. Though, although the team says it's
unlikely that the two people were related somehow, there is
(26:41):
still a lot to learn from this fine Now we
will move on to the exhumations. After a lengthy series
of proposals and challenges that we have been talking about
on the show since December. Francisco Franco's remains were exhumed
and moved on October. They were moved to a cemetery
near Madrid by helicopter and then re entered next to
(27:03):
his late wife in Unearthed. In October, we talked about
plans to exhume the remains of John Dillinger and have
them tested to confirm whether maybe the FBI and actually
killed someone else in ninety four and then buried that
person in Dillinger's place. The whole thing was meant to
be covered on a TV documentary, but instead everyone wound
up in court after Crown Hill Cemetery objected to this
(27:26):
whole plan. History Channel then announced it would not do
the documentary after all. One of Dillinger's descendants, Michael Thompson,
wanted to go ahead with this exclamation though, saying he
wanted some clarity about his ancestors death, But in December,
a judge in Indiana found in the cemetery's favor, ruling
that the exhimation could not go ahead without the cemetery's consent.
(27:48):
This still is not necessarily over though the law gives
Thompson's attorney ten days to file an amended complaint, in
thirty days to appeal to a higher court. So that
could still be ongoing as we are recording this, or
in that window between when we record it and when
this episode comes out. It's entirely possible that in ten minutes,
when we were done this episode, there will be a
(28:08):
headline with a new update about that. I would even
say probable. It's this is the law of averages for
us and other news to Dublin counselors have proposed that
the remains of James Joyce be exhumed from Zurich and
reinterred in Dublin sometime before the anniversary of the publication
of his work. Ulysses that anniversary is happening in twenty two.
(28:32):
This has led to debate about what Joyce and his
wife Noura Barnicle wanted for their remains after their deaths,
as well as to some resistance to that whole idea
from the James Joyce Foundation in Switzerland. At this point,
this is a motion filed by two city councilors, and
it's not a concrete plan for an exhimation to take place,
So we might very well be coming back to this
(28:52):
one at some point in the future, also sparking intense
debate this fall at about the same time it was
a plan to turn joyce former home in Dublin into
a hostel. That debate seems to still be ongoing as
of when we're recording this. For our last item, South
Australian Attorney General Vicky Chapman granted a conditional approval to
exhume the unidentified remains of the person known as the
(29:15):
Somberton Man, something she reportedly started considering last year. This
is probably Australia's most famous and enduring unsolved mystery. The
body was found on a beach in the summer of
nicely dressed, with an unsmoked cigarette on his chest, and
with a piece of paper reading Tom and should in
a hidden pocket. I think that Josh and Chuck did
(29:36):
an episode on it. Oh yeah, did they. I think
this is a topic that people have asked us to cover.
I can't remember if either of us have ever kind
of circled it at some point and then moved away
from it. I have many times, So maybe that can
be a whole other thing from this unearth that you
may hear an episode about later, like, there are two
(29:57):
things we have mentioned that are actively in the works
for future episodes. Maybe that will be a third one.
Uh and stuff you should know did cover it in September. Okay,
it's not that long. So yeah, that's our that's our
unearthed for the year end of twenty nineteen, which I
think is actually coming out at the very start of
So happy New year, everyone, and I do have a
(30:18):
little bit of listener mail. It takes out fabulous. This
is from Katie. Katie writes about our Alfred Wegner episode
and says, firstly, thank you so much for your wonderful show.
It makes my time spent washing dishes and folding lottery
so much more enjoyable. I was tickled by the description
of Alfred Wegener's experiments on the formation of moon craters
(30:39):
because I essentially recreated them with fourth graders several years ago.
The experiment was part of a lunar science unit of
study created by one of the major hands on science
curriculum companies, so I assume one of their talented educators
must have known about Beginner's methods. Instead of cement powder,
we used flower with a light dusting of cocoa powder
on top, and then we dropped mar bowls and small
(31:01):
rocks into the flower and measured and observed the resulting creators.
I'm sure my students would have been thrilled to know
they were replicating an experiment done by a real scientist.
And I hope you are thrilled to know that Vegner's
crafty legacy lives on in elementary classrooms across America. Sincerely, Katie,
I am actually delighted to know. Yeah, my nieces are
(31:22):
definitely old enough to be dropping marbles into uh flower
or cocoa powder or whatever. Um. They are maybe not
quite old enough to make the connection between that and
the moon, but I might just save this for some
kind of future visit with nieces later on. UM. I
also will mention h a shout out to our listener Cathy,
(31:45):
who um I ran into while I was in Disney
World recently, and she introduced me to her grandson who
specifically loved the Alfred Vegner episode UH, and it came
up it coincided with the tectonics the and they're shifting
and all of that information being in produced in his
course swork at school, so it was kind of perfect
timing and he had a much broader sense of the
whole subject um. So that was really really lovely. Yeah,
(32:08):
well again, Happy New Year everyone. I think this is
our first episode of the New Year, and I hope
everybody who celebrates holidays and late December early January has
had great ones. If you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcasts were history podcast
at I heart radio dot com and then we're all
over social media at missed in History. That is where
you will find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. And
(32:31):
you can also subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast,
the I heart radio app, and anywhere else you get
your podcast. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a
production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
It's part two of our year en Unearthed. This time
we have some of our long time listener favorites. I
(00:23):
mean we did last time too, but some particular favorites
this time, including the edibles and potables, some utsy stuff,
and the exclamations. We have some of the things too,
and we will kick it off with several different studies
that we're all looking at exactly what caused the Neanderthals
to die out. Humans and Neanderthals coexisted on the European
continent for at least five thousand years before the human
(00:45):
population started to outstrip the Neanderthals, and after that, of course,
the Neanderthals eventually became extinct. Over the last few months,
we have heard about a few different papers trying to
get to the bottom of exactly what happened. So according
to researchers from Japan and Italy, it might be because
humans figured out how to use projectile weapons, including spear
(01:07):
throwers and bows and arrows. They found evidence that humans
might have used these kinds of weapons between forty and
forty five thousand years ago, which is twenty thousand years
earlier than previously thought. So they thought that this could
have given humans an edge over Neanderthals, who hadn't developed
that same technology. However, we should note that in a
(01:28):
previous installment of On Earth, we talked about research that
suggested that Neanderthal hunting spears could have been used as
throwing weapons. That particular study included replicas of three hundred
thousand year old javelins, much older than the forty forty
five thousand years in this research. And then for a
completely different idea, maybe the cause was chronic ear infections.
(01:53):
This hypothesis comes from a team of head and neck
anatomists who published a paper called Reconstructing the Neanderthal you
stayction Tube New Insights on Disease, susceptibility, fitness, cost and Extinction.
They published that in the Journal of the Anatomical Record.
In the words of Samuel Marquez, PhD. Quote it may
sound far fetched, but when we for the first time
(02:15):
reconstructed the Eustachian tubes of Neanderthals, we discovered that they
are remarkably similar to those of human infants. Middle ear
infections are nearly ubiquitous among infants because the flat angle
of an infant's eustation tubes is prone to retain the
tightest media. Bacteria that caused these infections the same flat
angle we found in the Andanderthals. So most human children
(02:38):
literally outgrow with these infections. As they get bigger, there
ustation tubes get longer and more sharply angled so that
their ears can drain better. But Neanderthal's eustation tubes remained
flat insu adulthood, making it more likely that they might
continue to have recurring or chronic infections, and apart from
the risk of death from a really acute infection, this
(02:59):
would have just life harder for Neanderthals, especially as they
were competing with humans for resources. Just it Gaze, You're
suddenly now as curious as Tracy was while she was
doing this research. The US station tube is named after
sixteenth century anatomist Bartolomeo Eustacy, and we're still not done
with this whole Neanderthal question. According to a paper by
(03:20):
scientists from Stanford which was published in the journal Nature Communications,
the cause might have been infectious diseases, not ear infections.
Using mathematical models, they concluded that humans and Neanderthals didn't
interact very much for the first centuries of their mutual
existence because they each carried and were resistant to different diseases.
(03:42):
So they suggested that each population was encircled by a
quote invisible disease barrier. But at some point humans and
Neanderthals started interbreeding. We know that for sure, and the
team behind this research suggests that the children of these
pairings may have had immunity to diseases from both groups,
tipping precarious balance that had lasted up until then. So
(04:03):
that led them to the question, why then did humans
eventually get the upper hand rather than Neanderthals if their
offspring had immunity to both sets of diseases, And the
answer might have been that there were more and deadlier
diseases in tropical areas where humans originated than there were
farther north into Europe and Asia, so it was a
(04:23):
lot easier for humans to move north and survive than
it was for Neanderthals to try to move south into
tropical Africa. And in our last study that we're talking
about on this subject, Maybe it was inbreeding. A team
from Indovin University of Technology the Netherlands used mathematical modeling
to study the effects of inbreeding on Neanderthal populations. Their
(04:45):
research suggests that inbreeding alone was not enough to explain
the extinction of the Neanderthals, but small populations of a
species are known to experience something called alley effects. Basically,
a very small population is just not as genetically fit
as a larger one, and in breeding and Alley effects
combined could have caused the Neanderthals to go extinct over
(05:07):
about a ten thousand year period. So the suggestion here
is that the introduction of humans to an area might
have influenced the Neanderthal behavior just enough to encourage more
inbreeding in a population that was already pretty small. But
they didn't think it was enough to say that human
activity conclusively caused Neanderthal's extinction, and the words of the
(05:28):
papers authors quote, did Neanderthals disappear because of us? No?
This study suggests the species demise might have been due
merely to a stroke of bad demographic luck. And now
we're moving on to one of my favorite subjects, clothing
and accessories. Excavations under tarbot Old Parish Church and the
Scottish Highlands have unearthed a man's ankle boots, complete with buckles,
(05:51):
and the thick hose that he wore with them. The
find is about six hundred years old and, in the
words of Cecily Spall of field Work Archaeology Services quote
the man had been put in a coffin wearing these clothes,
but the coffin at some point collapsed and everything concertinaed.
I wanted to have this quote in there specifically because
the description of everything concertina delighted me. It's not a
(06:15):
description I think we use as often in the US.
So because this collapse sealed this clothing off from oxygen,
it's pretty well preserved, with visible wear and tear that
seems to have come from the garment's use and not
from the collapse of the coffin or the decomposition of
the material over time. You can even see some of
this person's leg hair caught in the hose. A metal
(06:37):
detectorist in Estonia unearthed a seventeen hundred year old sacrificial
site that included a gold bracelet, crossbow, brooches, belt plaques
and silver plates. The bracelet in particular is noteworthy. It
might actually be a caller and it probably dates back
to the third century. An archaeological team came to the
site for further study of this discovery, with archaeologist Marika
(07:01):
Magid noting that gold is a rare find and sights
of this age in Estonia and a piece this large
and heavy is particularly rare. Magic told a news broadcast quote,
one can say that this is likely the most valuable
single find in the material sense to be unearthed in Estonia.
Uh this find has been sent to a museum. A
(07:22):
Dutch art detective has recovered a ring connected to Oscar
Wilde that was stolen during a burglary at Maudlin College
in two thousand two. The ring and two medals had
been stolen in the same incident, and after the culprit,
even Andrews, was caught, he said that he had sold
the ring to a scrap dealer. So after this was found,
it was returned to the college, which home burser Mark
(07:44):
Blandford Baker said he had given up hope of ever
seeing again like once the culprit said that he had
sold the stuff to a scrap dealer. People were like well,
that's definitely gone. This ring's history a bit of it.
In eighteen seventy six, Wild and his friend Reginald Harding
had given the ring to their friend William Ward. All
three of these men were friends while taking classes at
(08:05):
the college, and then the ring later became part of
the college's collection of Wild memorabilia. Archaeologists in China have
used enzyme linked immunosorb and assay to confirm the fibers
found in burial urns there are silk fabrics, making them
the world's oldest known silk They date back to between
fifty three hundred and fifty five hundred years ago, and
(08:26):
they suggest that silk making and dying techniques were relatively
refined by that point, meaning that people had first started
making silk well before that. Previously, the oldest known silk
fibers were from between forty two hundred and forty four
hundred years old. And to be clear, I put this
under clothing because it was the most related category, but
it wasn't actually clothing. The silk was part of the
(08:48):
material that had been used to wrap the dead, is
sort of postmortem clothing. You could also not exactly clothing
or at least not always close thing. Researchers have studied
twelve hundred beads made from ostrich eggshell to try to
spot patterns and how they might reflect social changes that
(09:08):
took place on the African continent thousands of years ago.
These beads came from thirty different sites, and their styles
and shapes seemed to shift when a new influence comes
into an area. In the words of lead author Jennifer Miller, quote,
these beads are symbols that were made by hunter gatherers
from both regions for more than forty thousand years, So
changes or lack thereof in these symbols tells us how
(09:31):
these communities responded to cultural contact and economic change. So
to expand on that, people in Africa started making these
beads at least fifty thousand years ago, and according to
previous research, the beads tended to get bigger when hurting
people moved into a region that had been previously inhabited
just by foragers. This new research suggests that the pattern
(09:54):
isn't that straightforward. In southern Africa, new styles of beads
followed evidence of the reduction of hurting, but previous bead
styles didn't go away, but in Eastern Africa, bead style
stayed the same even after hurting was introduced to an area.
This was the first study of bead patterns specifically in
Eastern Africa, and it's possible that the bead makers there
(10:16):
just weren't influenced by the newcomers, or it's possible that
the hurting people who moved into that area already had
a similar bead making style, so changes weren't as a parent.
Archaeologists from the University of Copenhagen have published a paper
in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports detailing three human
teeth that appear to have been used as jewelry, and
(10:37):
those teeth were found in Catali, which also came up
in our Autumn Unearthed. So the teeth are about eighty
five hundred years old and they had been drilled with
the same sorts of micro drills that were used to
make beads out of stones or animal bones. They were
also worn in a way that suggests that they had
been used as jewelry or something similar for quite some time.
(10:57):
The teeths chewing surfaces suggests did that they had belonged
to a mature adult, and so The suggestion was that
they were probably removed either after someone died or from
a skull of a person who had died quite some
time before that. After we take a quick sponsor break,
we're going to move on to another big favorite, edibles
and potables. Okay for our edibles and potables this time around.
(11:25):
A team of scientists at the University of Bristol has
reported the earliest known evidence of baby feeding bottles, or
at least their basic equivalent. These are small clay vessels
dating back to about five thousand BC. They're small enough
for a baby to hold, and they have this little
spout at the bottom that a baby could suck milk from.
Some of these vessels are shaped like imaginary animals, which
(11:48):
suggested to the team that they might be meant for children,
but they also noted that they could have been used
to feed adults who were very ill or were otherwise
unable to eat solid food. The team looked at three
specific examples that have been found in the graves of
children and tested them, and they contained residues from the
milk of domesticated room and animals like cows and the
(12:09):
words of Dr Julie Dunn from the University of Bristol,
who was the lead author of the paper published on
the spine that was published in the journal Nature, quote
similar vessels, although rare, do appear in other prehistoric cultures,
such as Rome and ancient Greece across the world. Ideally,
we'd like to carry out a larger geographic study and
investigate whether they served the same purpose. Researchers studying a
(12:33):
cave near Tel Aviv have found evidence that Paleolithic people
saved animal bones for up to nine weeks so that
they could have the marrow as a food source later on,
comparing it to being like opening up a can of soup.
They had already known that bone marrow was an important
source of nutrition in Paleolithic diets, but they had thought
that food was scarce enough that people had to eat
(12:53):
whatever they had as soon as they had it. The
team concluded that these bones were preserved rather than immediately
bro can open for their marrow because of evidence of
chopping marks that did not match up with butchering methods
that were known to be used with fresh meat. And
this is the earliest known evidence of people basically using
bones for food storage purposes rather than consuming what was inside.
(13:14):
Them immediately. A team in Puerto Rico has examined twenty
of fossilized clam shells to try to determine how the
pre aarrowalk population of the island prepared them for eating.
Their analysis of these shells suggest that they were cooked
at more than one hundred degrees celsius, which is the
boiling point of water, but less than two hundred degrees,
(13:35):
concluding that they were cooked over a flame rather than boiled.
The study said barbecued, but we know from our recent
barbecue live show people have a lot of opinions on
whether that would be the correct word in this situation. Yeah.
This team also noted that this fine provides some circumstantial
evidence about whether pottery was widely used on the island,
(13:55):
because you would need some pottery vessels in order to
be able to boil claim. A newly published book has
detailed the finding of an excavation at berry Fields in Buckinghamshire, England.
The excavation took place between two thousand seven and twenty six.
One interesting find a bread basket along with the only
intact chickens egg from Roman Britain. So this egg was
(14:18):
actually one of four that were found at the site,
but the other three broke, which was still a very
stinky experience. According to the archaeologists on the scene, It's
possible that the bread basket and the bread that it
presumably contained, as well as the eggs, might have been
thrown into this pit sometime after the late third century.
(14:39):
That was something that people did for good luck or
as part of a religious ritual. All I can think
of is Templeton the rat now Um. The book is
called berry Fields Iron Age Settlement and a Roman bridge
Field System and Settlement along Ackman Street near Fleet Marston, Buckinghamshire,
and it is published by Oxford Archaeology. So this last
(15:00):
one isn't exactly edible, but it was the best place
to put it. Researchers at the University of Copenagen have
managed to sequence an entire ancient genome from a fifty
seven hundred year old piece of birch pitch that was
used as chewing gum. Basically we've talked about chewing gum
finds before. They described this as the first time that
an entire ancient genome has been extracted from something that
(15:23):
was not bone. This piece of pitch was found in
southern Denmark, and in addition to the human DNA that
it contained, it also had traces of plant and animal
DNA that were probably part of that person's diet, as
well as DNA from the microbes in their mouth. We
have a few examples of items being returned or repatriated
(15:44):
to their place or culture of origin. Next, the United
States Department of Homeland Security returned the head of a
marble statue to Libya in October. In the US and
Libya had signed an agreement that imposed restrictions on the
import of of being cultural property to the United States,
and then this head had been smuggled into the US
and violation of that agreement. This was a returned to
(16:06):
the Libyan embassy in Washington, d C. When living authorities
said it would be returned to its historical location. Cambridge
University College is returning a statute that was looted from Nigeria.
The bronze statue of a Cockerell was removed from Nigeria,
then the Kingdom of Benin in eighteen ninety seven, and
then it was given to the college by a student's father.
(16:27):
This is one of many bronzes that were taken from
Benin and are now in British museums and universities. There's
a whole effort that I just saw an article about
after sending like this outline was done. It was done,
it was sent finished about a whole effort uh in
in Britain to try to track down other artifacts that
(16:49):
should be returned to Nigeria. And then, in similar news,
France has returned to nineteenth century saber to Senegal. The
French had seized this sword in eighteen ninety three and
then placed it in the collection of Paris's Army Museum.
The saber initially belonged to Omar said Utal and was
confiscated from his son. This was part of an effort
(17:10):
announced last year in which France would return items of
African cultural heritage within five years, with French President Emmanuel
Macron saying quote, I cannot accept that a large part
of cultural heritage from several African countries is in France.
There are historical explanations for that, but there are no
valid justifications that are durable and unconditional. African heritage can't
(17:33):
just be in European private collections and museums. But progress
on actually fulfilling this whole plan has actually been slow
as French lawmakers have tried to hash out the legal
and logistical details. What's next bit isn't exactly a repatriation,
but it has some of the same themes. We have
talked a lot in our Unearthed episodes and other times
(17:55):
about discoveries that have come from DNA analysis on ancient
human remains, and the rise of these kinds of studies
has brought up some ethical questions. Research that involves the
DNA of living people is supposed to be conducted following
ethical rules and guidelines based on the idea that people
should have a right to privacy when it comes to
(18:15):
their own health information and their own DNA, but ancient
DNA can be in kind of a gray area. And
to be clear, this is not just a theoretical question
of what rights long dead ancient people should have over
their own DNA. These results of these studies can have
huge cultural and political implications for people living today, especially
(18:36):
indigenous people and other ethnic minorities. So the National Science
Foundation has awarded a three hundred fifty thousand, eight hundred
eighty two dollar collaborative grant to the University of Connecticut,
the Denver Museum of Nature, and science and partners across
the United States, Canada, and Europe to study this question.
This team that's being assembled plans to involve in digital
(19:00):
this leaders, in these conversations, and to try to establish
standards for this research that are respectful of indigenous communities
and that encourage collaboration among the researchers doing the work
with the people who that work might affect. In July,
we talked about Greece's demand for the Parthenon marbles to
be returned from the British Museum, and there has been
(19:21):
a lot more back and forth about that since then,
so stay tuned for a future episode of the podcast
on that one. We hope it's in the works. I
think at this point it's it's it's moved from we
hope to pretty likely. Over just the last twenty four hours,
we have some musy news. As almost always, various researchers
(19:41):
have been studying the human intestinal microbiome and how that
microbiome might be connected to various diseases and conditions. So
several studies have connected things like processed foods at an
increased use of antibiotics, various hygiene practices, and other behaviors
all grouped under the da of a Western lifestyle. So
(20:02):
studies have connected that Western lifestyle to changes in the microbiome,
and these changes in the microbiome have been correlated with
a rise in things like autoimmune disorders, allergies, and gastro
intestinal diseases. A paper published in the journal Cell, Host
and Microbe examined the gut microbes of people across multiple continents.
(20:25):
They specifically looked at the provatelecopri complex, which includes four
different clades and is associated with a number of health concerns.
The team found that this bacteria was present in about
thirty of people with more Western lifestyles and about nine
percent of people described as having non Western lifestyles. Yeah,
the incredibly basic idea is that in a lot of
(20:46):
cases there seems to be a correlation, not necessarily causation,
between a lack of these bacteria and various health conditions.
So then these results were compared to ancient microbiomes include
both fossilized human poop and Lutsie's microbiome. Leutsy, of course,
did not have a Western lifestyle at all, and his
(21:08):
microbiome showed evidence of three of the four clades of
this bacterium. In other Utsy News, researchers at the University
of Glasgow and the University of Innsbruck have been trying
to identify all the mosses and live rewards that were
found around Utsie's remains. These plants are classified as briaphites,
and there are thousands of fragments of briaphite in the
(21:31):
ice that was around Dutsie's body. Although only twenty three
species of bria Phites live in the area today, there
are at least seventy five species from immediately around Utsie's
remains and from his clothing gear and his gut. And
we are going to take one more quick sponsor break
before we get to the rest of our unearthed. Okay,
(21:58):
we've already talked in these two episodes about various findings
that came from burial sites or the grave goods in
them in some way. For our next few finds, the
connection to burials is the thing that they have in common. First,
a team studying a four thousand year old burial site
off the coast of the U s State of Georgia
(22:18):
have said that it shows evidence of really long ranging
relationships among hunter gatherer people's during North America's Woodland period.
What they found at the ancient shell pit was a
burial site that had a lot in common with funerary
practices of people living in the Great Lakes area at
about the same time. In the words of Matthew Sanger,
who led the research team, quote, our excavations revealed remarkable
(22:42):
parallels between the shell Ring in the coastal Southeast and
in broadly contemporaneous sites in the Great Lakes, including the
use of cremation to handle the dead, cremating the dead
in an area separate from where the bones were eventually buried,
the use of copper as a burial item, the burial
of multiple people at the same time, and the use
of ochre in the burial. Not only are these practices
(23:05):
very similar, our analyzes clearly showed that the copper found
at the shell Ring originated in the Great Lakes and
was therefore traded between the two regions. Notably, all of
these practices are rare or entirely absent from the regions
between the Great Lakes and the Southeast, which suggests that
there was not some sort of general diffusion of traditions,
(23:26):
but rather a direct transplant. Basically, the suggests that the
people living in eastern North America four thousand years ago
weren't necessarily sticking to relatively isolated pockets of territory. They
may have traveled very long distances and had interactions that
stretched across much of the eastern half of the continent.
The paper that they published on this was called Great
(23:46):
Lakes Copper and Shared Mortuary Practices on the Atlantic Coast
Implications for long distance exchange during the Late Archaic, and
it was published in the journal American Antiquity. In other news,
A Roman Catholic church and settle Check rep Public is
nicknamed the Bone Church because it houses the bones of
somewhere between forty thousand and seventy thousand people in an ossuary.
(24:08):
Some of these bones are stacked and others are arranged
into formations, and these are the remains of people who
died of plague in the mid fourteenth century, as well
as in the Hussite Wars that followed. An ongoing restoration
project at the church has also involved excavation in the area,
and during that time researchers have found two mass graves,
(24:29):
one from a thirteen eighteen famine and one from atty
eight plague. Together, this represents another twelve hundred skeletons moving on.
The Aquita Museum in Bordeaux, France, is on the site
of what was once a convent, and in November they
announced that a tomb in the museum's basement might contain
the remains of sixteenth century Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne,
(24:53):
who died in fifteen ninety two and whose body's location
hasn't been totally clear because it was moved several times
after his death, Although there is still work to be done,
the wooden coffin in the tomb does have Montagna written
on it in large brown letters. It does seem like
a clue maybe, I mean, it could be some other Montagna,
(25:15):
or somebody who loved Montagna, or someone who wanted to
confuse us all in the future. In October, a team
in Norway found an unusual boat burial. Now, boat burials
on their own are not unheard of. There have been
several of them found over the last couple of years
(25:36):
that I've heard about. But in this case, the same
grave site contains the remains of two people who died
and were buried about a hundred years apart. The grave
site is at a Viking age farm. The older burial
is described as a man buried with weapons in a
boat between nine and ten ms long in the eighth century.
Then in the ninth century, a woman was buried in
(25:58):
address fashioned with shell shaped brooches, along with a crucifix
shaped brooch, a pearl necklace, scissors, a spindle whirl and
a cow's head. She was also placed in a boat,
this one seven or eight meters long. For her burial,
the older grave was excavated and she and her boat
were placed into the boat that was already there, along
with the body that was already in it. So this
(26:21):
is not the only double boat burial that was ever found,
but it's a rare enough occurrence that archaeologist Raymond Savage,
who was the project manager for this excavation, said that
he had never heard of the practice before. He did
later learn of other examples that had been found in
another part of Norway. Though, although the team says it's
unlikely that the two people were related somehow, there is
(26:41):
still a lot to learn from this fine Now we
will move on to the exhumations. After a lengthy series
of proposals and challenges that we have been talking about
on the show since December. Francisco Franco's remains were exhumed
and moved on October. They were moved to a cemetery
near Madrid by helicopter and then re entered next to
(27:03):
his late wife in Unearthed. In October, we talked about
plans to exhume the remains of John Dillinger and have
them tested to confirm whether maybe the FBI and actually
killed someone else in ninety four and then buried that
person in Dillinger's place. The whole thing was meant to
be covered on a TV documentary, but instead everyone wound
up in court after Crown Hill Cemetery objected to this
(27:26):
whole plan. History Channel then announced it would not do
the documentary after all. One of Dillinger's descendants, Michael Thompson,
wanted to go ahead with this exclamation though, saying he
wanted some clarity about his ancestors death, But in December,
a judge in Indiana found in the cemetery's favor, ruling
that the exhimation could not go ahead without the cemetery's consent.
(27:48):
This still is not necessarily over though the law gives
Thompson's attorney ten days to file an amended complaint, in
thirty days to appeal to a higher court. So that
could still be ongoing as we are recording this, or
in that window between when we record it and when
this episode comes out. It's entirely possible that in ten minutes,
when we were done this episode, there will be a
(28:08):
headline with a new update about that. I would even
say probable. It's this is the law of averages for
us and other news to Dublin counselors have proposed that
the remains of James Joyce be exhumed from Zurich and
reinterred in Dublin sometime before the anniversary of the publication
of his work. Ulysses that anniversary is happening in twenty two.
(28:32):
This has led to debate about what Joyce and his
wife Noura Barnicle wanted for their remains after their deaths,
as well as to some resistance to that whole idea
from the James Joyce Foundation in Switzerland. At this point,
this is a motion filed by two city councilors, and
it's not a concrete plan for an exhimation to take place,
So we might very well be coming back to this
(28:52):
one at some point in the future, also sparking intense
debate this fall at about the same time it was
a plan to turn joyce former home in Dublin into
a hostel. That debate seems to still be ongoing as
of when we're recording this. For our last item, South
Australian Attorney General Vicky Chapman granted a conditional approval to
exhume the unidentified remains of the person known as the
(29:15):
Somberton Man, something she reportedly started considering last year. This
is probably Australia's most famous and enduring unsolved mystery. The
body was found on a beach in the summer of
nicely dressed, with an unsmoked cigarette on his chest, and
with a piece of paper reading Tom and should in
a hidden pocket. I think that Josh and Chuck did
(29:36):
an episode on it. Oh yeah, did they. I think
this is a topic that people have asked us to cover.
I can't remember if either of us have ever kind
of circled it at some point and then moved away
from it. I have many times, So maybe that can
be a whole other thing from this unearth that you
may hear an episode about later, like, there are two
(29:57):
things we have mentioned that are actively in the works
for future episodes. Maybe that will be a third one.
Uh and stuff you should know did cover it in September. Okay,
it's not that long. So yeah, that's our that's our
unearthed for the year end of twenty nineteen, which I
think is actually coming out at the very start of
So happy New year, everyone, and I do have a
(30:18):
little bit of listener mail. It takes out fabulous. This
is from Katie. Katie writes about our Alfred Wegner episode
and says, firstly, thank you so much for your wonderful show.
It makes my time spent washing dishes and folding lottery
so much more enjoyable. I was tickled by the description
of Alfred Wegener's experiments on the formation of moon craters
(30:39):
because I essentially recreated them with fourth graders several years ago.
The experiment was part of a lunar science unit of
study created by one of the major hands on science
curriculum companies, so I assume one of their talented educators
must have known about Beginner's methods. Instead of cement powder,
we used flower with a light dusting of cocoa powder
on top, and then we dropped mar bowls and small
(31:01):
rocks into the flower and measured and observed the resulting creators.
I'm sure my students would have been thrilled to know
they were replicating an experiment done by a real scientist.
And I hope you are thrilled to know that Vegner's
crafty legacy lives on in elementary classrooms across America. Sincerely, Katie,
I am actually delighted to know. Yeah, my nieces are
(31:22):
definitely old enough to be dropping marbles into uh flower
or cocoa powder or whatever. Um. They are maybe not
quite old enough to make the connection between that and
the moon, but I might just save this for some
kind of future visit with nieces later on. UM. I
also will mention h a shout out to our listener Cathy,
(31:45):
who um I ran into while I was in Disney
World recently, and she introduced me to her grandson who
specifically loved the Alfred Vegner episode UH, and it came
up it coincided with the tectonics the and they're shifting
and all of that information being in produced in his
course swork at school, so it was kind of perfect
timing and he had a much broader sense of the
whole subject um. So that was really really lovely. Yeah,
(32:08):
well again, Happy New Year everyone. I think this is
our first episode of the New Year, and I hope
everybody who celebrates holidays and late December early January has
had great ones. If you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcasts were history podcast
at I heart radio dot com and then we're all
over social media at missed in History. That is where
you will find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. And
(32:31):
you can also subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast,
the I heart radio app, and anywhere else you get
your podcast. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a
production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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