Unearthed! Year-end 2022, Part 2

Part two of our Unearthed! wrap up of 2022 covers a potpourri of stuff that didn’t go together, books and letters, edibles and potables, and apparel, including more than one pair of blue jeans.

Research:

• “Chemical clues to the mystery of what’s coating Stradivari’s violins.” 10/25/2022. https://www.acs.org/pressroom/newsreleases/2022/october/chemical-clues-to-the-mystery-of-whats-coating-stradivaris-violins.html
• Alex, Bridget. “Why Prehistoric Herders Didn’t Spit Out Their Watermelon Seeds.” Smithsonian. 11/3/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/watermelon-seeds-were-snacked-before-its-flesh-became-sweet-180981008/
• Andalou Agency. “Rare 1,800-year-old medal bearing Medusa discovered in SE Türkiye.” 10/5/2022. https://www.dailysabah.com/gallery/rare-1800-year-old-medal-bearing-medusa-discovered-in-se-turkiye/images
• “Researchers identify bird species depicted in ancient, finely detailed Egyptian painting.” Via Phys.org. 12/27/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-bird-species-depicted-ancient-finely.html
• Armstrong, Kathryn. “Ireland to return mummified remains and sarcophagus to Egypt.” BBC. 12/8/2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63908027
• Aronsky, Tali. “First sentence ever written in Canaanite language discovered: Plea to eradicate beard lice.” EurekAlert. 11/8/2022. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/970428
• Associated Press. “Massachusetts museum returns sacred items to Sioux tribes.” 11/6/2022. https://apnews.com/article/travel-museums-massachusetts-south-dakota-5468cac3216c4ef489a70bfb8830b846
• Associated Press. “Swedes find 17th century sister vessel to famed Vasa warship.” 10/25/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-swedes-17th-century-sister-vessel.html
• Bardan, Roxana. “NASA Views Images, Confirms Discovery of Shuttle Challenger Artifact.” NASA. 11/10/2022. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-views-images-confirms-discovery-of-shuttle-challenger-artifact
• Barkin, Joel. “Colgate University Repatriates More than 1,500 Funerary Objects and to the Oneida Indian Nation, Apologizes for Acquisition of Cultural Artifacts.” 11/9/2022. https://www.oneidaindiannation.com/colgate-university-repatriates-more-than-1500-funerary-objects-and-to-the-oneida-indian-nation-apologizes-for-acquisition-of-cultural-artifacts/
• Benzine, Vittoria. “Archaeologists Recovered 275 Artifacts From the Wreck of a 19th-Century Ship That Sunk in the Search for the Northwest Passage.” Artnet. 12/26/2022. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/hms-erebus-parks-canada-recovered-artifacts-leather-folio-2236362
• Cheshire, Ben. “Somerton Man Charles Webb's true identity revealed in family photographs and divorce papers.” Australian Story. 11/20/2022. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-21/somerton-manfamily-photographs-revealed-/101643524
• City of Tulsa. “1921 Graves Investigation Update – November 15, 2022.” Press release. https://www.cityoftulsa.org/press-room/1921-graves-investigation-update-november-15-2022/
• Dartmouth College. “Ancient stone tools from China provide earliest evidence of rice harvesting.” Phys.org. 12/7/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-ancient-stone-tools-china-earliest.html
• Enking, Molly. “Archaeologists Find 1,900-Year-Old Snacks in Sewers Beneath the Colosseum.” Smithsonian. 12/2/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-roman-spectator-snacks-dog-bones-discovered-in-colosseum-dig-180981211/
• Enking, Molly. “Archaeologists Find 24 Bronze Statues, Preserved in Tuscan Spa for 2,300 Years.” Smithsonian. 11/10/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/groundbreaking-ancient-roman-bronze-statues-discovered-in-tuscany-180981105/
• Enking, Molly. “Pope Francis Will Return Parthenon Sculptures to Greece.” Smithsonian. 12/23/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vatican-museum-will-return-parthenon-sculptures-to-greece

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. It is
time for Part two of Unearthed. Part one. We just

(00:21):
talked about updates, shipwrecks, and repatriations, because there was a
lot of all three of those this time. As is
often the case, we're starting out with some stuff that
I just didn't have a category for, but it was
all very cool, along with some books and letters, some
edibles and potables, some apparel, including more than one thing

(00:42):
about blue jeans. I found that little pattern interesting. Uh.
And we'll start off, as we so often do, with
the pot pourri, which is stuff like a Jeopardy category,
just haphazardly thrown together because I liked it all. I
didn't have a category for it, no pattern to recognize.
So taking things off, there is a stone structure in
Cork Harbor in Southern Ireland, shaped like a Dolman. That's

(01:06):
a monument of large upright stones with a single stone
lying across them, like an archer roof. And for a
long time people thought this was something commissioned in the
eighteenth or nineteenth century by someone at Rostall and Castle
not far away, kind of as a decorative folly. But
according to archaeologist Michael Gibbon, this is not a relatively
new monument made to look prehistoric. It really is a

(01:30):
megalithic tomb. It sits at the end of a long
cairn that's partially buried in mud and this type of
tomb is known as a portal tomb, and there's only
one other similar tomb known to exist in Ireland. It
is not totally clear exactly when this tomb was made.
These were usually built near the coast, but not actually
in the water, and this is partially submerged. The sea

(01:53):
levels in the area are believed to have been about
where they are today for the last two thousand years,
so probably some time before that, don't really know yet.
A team in Canada has found the cameras that a
pair of American mountaineers abandoned during an attempt to summit
Mount Leukenia in seven The mountaineers were Bradford Washburn and

(02:14):
Bob Bates, who had planned to fly out of the
region after summitting the mountain, but the weather was unexpectedly
warm and stormy. And their plane sank in the slush
after dropping them off on Walsh Glacier. Although the pilot
was able to leave. Days later, the duo changed their
plans to hike out rather than flying. This required a

(02:34):
hundred mile treks, so they abandoned a lot of their
heaviest gear on the glacier, planning to come back for
it later, but that never happened. I haven't done a
ton of research on this attempts to sum of the glacier.
Some of the things that I read suggested that the
pilot was like, I am not risking this again. You
guys are on your own, uh, And some characterized it

(02:56):
more as the two of them being like, I think
it's going to be safer if we do it this way. Regardless, though,
glaciers move, so while people had a general idea of
where this gear had been abandoned, that is not where
it would be anymore. And then, to make things more complicated,
Walsh Glacier is a surging glacier, meaning that it moves

(03:18):
the small amount every year, but every once in a
while it moves a lot farther and faster. Figuring out
where those cameras might be today turned into a team
effort involving glaciologists from the University of Ottawa, and in
the end they did find the cameras. They were more
than twelve miles from where they had been abandoned. It

(03:39):
almost didn't happen, though. The first expedition to find the
gear was unsuccessful, but then the team returned in August
of last year with a new estimated location, and on
the last day of that second attempt they found multiple cameras, tents,
climbing gear, and other equipment spread out over a huge
swath of glacier. Some of the cameras still contained film,

(04:02):
although as of working on this episode, it's not really
known whether that film survived the elements for more than
eighty years. But even if there's nothing usable on the film,
this effort has contributed to the understanding of how the
Walsh Glacier moves and how much ice the region has
lost since ninety seven. Moving on, researchers in Italy have

(04:23):
analyzed the finishing treatments of two violins made by Antonio
Stratavaria in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and
then trying to figure out the makeup of a coding
that was applied in between the wood and the varnish.
Using a combination of methods and technologies, they eventually identified
a layer of protein based compounds. These would have smoothed

(04:47):
out the wood before the varnish was applied, and that
might have played a role in the instrument's resonance. It
was already previously known that at least some of Stratibaria's
instruments had some kind of coding in between the wood
and the varnish, but we didn't really know what that
coding was made of. Also, just a shout out to
Listener Hadley, who wrote a press release about this research

(05:10):
antagoned us in it on Twitter. Researchers in what is
now the southwestern US have been examining how different indigenous
nations who have lived in the area have used fire
management practices and how those practices have affected the prevalence
and severity of wildfires. This research was led by Southern
Methodist University, with a research team that included members of

(05:32):
the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Navajo Nation, and the
Pueblo of Hams. The team studied nearly five thousand fire
scarred trees in Arizona and New Mexico, and these showed
some evidence of a regular cycle of rainy periods followed
by significant drought, but when indigenous people were using burning practices,

(05:54):
this cycle was often interrupted. The indigenous communities who were
part of this study all used burning in different ways
and for different reasons and at different times of the year.
But regardless of all those differences, at times when indigenous
communities were carrying out their burning practices, there was often
an interruption in the more destructive wildfires and the sort

(06:17):
of cycle of wet weather to drought and burning evidence
in the trees. This is not the first research involving
indigenous fire management and the burning practices that we've talked
about on the show, but it is the first time
that research has looked more broadly at different communities burning
practices as part of one study, rather than looking at

(06:38):
one community's practices and the impact of just those practices. Next,
we will move on to several pieces of jewelry and apparel. First,
archaeologists working at the ancient city of Paris and what's
now Turkya have found a medallion in the shape of
a medusa head dating back to the first or second century.

(06:59):
It's believed that this was a military metal, and then
it would have been worn on the shield or the
armor of the soldier who received it. This looks a
little bit different from what you might be imagining when
someone says the name Medusa. So it is not a
monstrous face with hair made of snakes. Instead, this face
is strikingly attractive, with wavy hair that just looks like hair,

(07:22):
and then a pair of little winglets on top of
her head. Okay. I stared at this for a while,
being like, is that hair hair or snakes? Is it? Um?
And there's an older, an older similar Medusa head that
it may have been sort of patterned after. Or you
can clearly see two snakes under the chin of the face. Um,

(07:44):
And I stared at that for a while to to
to be like, are those two snakes? Or is that?
What is that? Um? I spent a whole lot of
time looking at this Medusa head anyway. A farmer in
Chia has unearthed a bronze belts happened while harvest beat roots,
which I don't I found it delightful for some reason.

(08:04):
This belt is made from very thin gold along with
some copper and iron, and apart from being somewhat crumpled.
This was in really good condition. The farmer did not
crumple it. It was already crumpled when it was found,
probably because of the agricultural activity that had already been
going on in this field. This belt is decorated with

(08:24):
raised concentric circles with rose shaped clasps at each end,
and due to its size, initially people thought it was
a tiara. Preliminary dating suggests that this was made in
the fourteenth century BC, and it's going to be conserved
and eventually displayed at the Museum of Bruntal. In other
jewelry news, archaeologists working near Harpol, Northamptonshire have found a

(08:48):
burial site dating back to between six thirty and six
seventy C. This whole discovery has been described with a
lot of superlatives, things like most significant. But thing in
particular has really gotten special attention, and that is a
thirty piece necklace made of gold and semi precious stones.

(09:08):
That necklace has gotten its own superlatives like most ornate
necklace of its type ever found in Britain. A reconstruction
of this necklace as it would have looked when it
was new is really beautiful, with a string of pendants,
including gold Roman coins interspersed with semi precious stones, and
then a central pendant with a cross motif. We don't

(09:30):
really know who this necklace belonged to, though the only
human remains that were found at this site were some
fragments of tooth enamel. Everything else seems to have decayed,
but research just believed this was someone wealthy and powerful.
She was almost certainly Christian, based on the presence of
an ornate cross that was buried with her. She might

(09:50):
have been an abbess or maybe a princess who had
some kind of a connection to the church. Archaeologists in
southwestern Sweden have found a late Viking Age ambulant it
in the shape of Thor's hammer. This dates back to
the tenth or eleventh century. It's likely made of lead
and it is embossed with elaborate designs. It may have
been gilded or silvered, and there's a hole through the shaft,

(10:13):
suggesting that this piece was worn as a necklace. Had
not really been thoroughly cleaned or conserved yet when this
was written up, so we don't quite know about the
gilding or silver ring if that was there. Now closing
out our jewelry and apparel. We have two different pairs
of jeans. The first pair of work pants was salvaged

(10:33):
from the eighteen fifty seven shipwreck of the S S
Central America, and it may be the oldest known pair
of Levi Strouss jeans. These pants were in a trunk
that belonged to John Demmitt, who survived the wreck of
the S S Central America. The trunk that the jeans
were in was recovered from the wreck in and then

(10:53):
they were sold at auction in December for a hundred
and fourteen thousand dollars and fluting the auction house fees.
Whether these really are Levi Strauss jeans is not conclusively proven,
though Strauss had set up a business in San Francisco
by this point and the Central America's cargo included gold

(11:13):
that was on its way to Strouss. But Strauss and
his colleague Jacob Davis didn't file for a patent on
their riveted work pants until more than a decade after
the Central America sank. News reports quoted a historian from
the Levi Strouss and Company archives as saying a connection
between these pants and Levi Strousse is speculative, noting several

(11:35):
key differences between these pants and the first known designs
by Levi Strauss and Company. Another pair of Levi jeans,
and this one definitely apparent levis sold at auction in
October for eighties seven thousand dollars including a buyer's premium.
These had been found in a mine and they are

(11:56):
described as dating back to the eighteen eighties and still
in wearable. Addition, they have the Levi's labeling, so we
know we know who made these ones for sure. A
lot of the coverage of this sale also made note
of the fact that one of the pockets of these
genes has a label that describes the garment as being

(12:16):
made by white labor. That is something that we talked
about in our previous episode on Levi Strouss. We talked
about that shipwreck of the Central America in that episode. Also,
a lot of manufacturers, including Strauss, added labels like these
to their products or used similar phrasing in their advertisements
during a period of just increasing hostility against Chinese immigrants

(12:40):
to the United States that ultimately all led into the
Chinese Exclusion Act of two. We are going to take
a sponsor break here and when we come back, we're
going to talk about a little bit of DNA. Now,

(13:01):
we have some things that are related to d N
A and genetics. First, according to research published in the
journal Nature in October, genetic differences may explain why some
people survived the Black Death and others did not. This
research looked at genes from two hundred and six ancient
DNA extracts. These came from two different European populations, and

(13:26):
the team was looking at genes that were related to
the immune system and looking at things from before, during,
and after the Black Death, and they found that some
genetic differences did seem to offer more protection against the plague.
People that had these differences seemed to have an odds
of survival that were as much as forty better. Researchers

(13:49):
speculate that these differences would protect people from plague if
there were a large outbreak today. But today, these same
genes are also correlated with a number of autoimmune disorders.
It has long been speculated that the massive death toll
of the Black Death would have altered the genetic makeup
of Europe, and this is some of the research suggesting

(14:09):
how moving on in one the body of Gregor Mendel
was exhumed so his DNA could be studied ahead of
the two anniversary of his birthday. Mendel is often nicknamed
the father of genetics thanks to his developing his principles
of inheritance. He did that based on experiments with breeding

(14:31):
pea plants. Like tens of thousands of pea plants he
experimented with. Exhuming him to analyze his DNA required researchers
to get permission from the Augustinian Religious Order because he
was an Augustinian Friar and was also buried in a
tomb with several other friars. The plan was to sequence

(14:52):
Mendel's entire genome, but researchers also needed to look at
his DNA to confirm which of the bodies in the
two was his. It was prior to this already known
that this tomb contained multiple other people's bodies. That was
not a surprise. Researchers reported that their analysis of his
DNA showed that he carried jeanes connected to diabetes, heart problems,

(15:14):
kidney disease, and epilepsy, and other neurological disorders. The idea
of exhuming somebody to do DNA tests for a recognition
of his birthday raised some eyebrows. When asked what they
thought Mendel might have thought about all this, some of
the researchers pointed out that it's impossible to ask him,

(15:36):
but that before his death he did ask to be
given a thorough autopsy, So some of the folks involved
concluded that from that they thought he probably would have
been okay with it. I could see him being completely
delighted by Yeah, like to think that the science that
he seeded essentially could then be used to like greatly

(16:00):
understand humans in general and then specifically reflected back on him.
I would think that would be cool, Yeah, if I
were that person. If yeah, then that's one of those
things where it's like, there's so many different attitudes about
death and what needs to happen to our bodies after
we die. It's hard to say sometimes, uh, but yeah.
The idea of like, so we're gonna do what for

(16:21):
whose birthday? I see what you're getting at, but should
we like that seemed to be the tone of some
of the conversation. Moving on, DNA research has allowed officials
to identify the body of a boy whose remains were
discovered in Philadelphia in February of nineteen fifty seven. This
boy had clearly been the victim of a homicide. Efforts

(16:43):
to find his identity and figure out what had happened
to him back in the nineteen fifties were unsuccessful, and
in the nineteen nineties his body was exhumed so his
DNA could be analyzed, with a second exhimation taking place
in an investigative genetic genealogy painstakingly created a family tree
through mostly distant relatives, including some who had undergone DNA testing,

(17:07):
and posted their results on a genetic genealogy website. Investigators
identified this body as that of Joseph Augustus Zarelli in
one and they publicly announced the name more than a
year after that. Um this is basically still a cold
case involving a homicide, and so they released his name
when they felt like it might help find a break

(17:29):
in the case. This, of course, though, led to a
lot of speculation about who the culprit might be in
this murder. At this point, though that aspect of the
case is unsolved. And lastly, the Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine was awarded in October and It was awarded
to Swedish geneticists Sante Pebo, whose work has included sequencing

(17:51):
the Neanderthal genome. He also uncovered genetic evidence that Homo
sapiens and Neanderthal's interbred, with most people living to day
sharing between one percent and four of their DNA with Neanderthals.
He also conducted the genetic work used to identify the
now extinct dennis Ovans, also showing them Modern humans in

(18:12):
some parts of the world share as much as six
percent of their DNA with dennis Ovans. Now we are
moving on from DNA to books and letters, and the
first several of these involved writing, but they're not on
paper or parchment or papyrus or any of the other
writing services that you might be thinking of when we
say books and letters. First, researchers found a two thousand

(18:35):
year old flat piece of bronze shaped like a life
sized hand in northern Spain in one and once this
piece had been cleaned, there was writing visible. In November,
it was announced that the writing on this hand maybe
a precursor to the Bosque language. Specifically, it may be
an example of written language by a tribe known as

(18:55):
a Vasconists who lived in what is now Spain and
whose language may have developed in to Bosque. If that's
the case, this is a monumental discovery for two reasons. One,
Before this point, most linguists believed that the Vasconists did
not develop a written language until after Roman invaders had
introduced Latin scripts to the area. Instead, it was believed

(19:19):
that there were only a few written words in that language,
and that they were mostly used to mark things like
coins seconds. Although hundreds of thousands of people speak the
Basque language today, very little is known about how that
language actually developed, so this could provide some new insight
into that question. In another potentially notable find, researchers have

(19:43):
also found what maybe the oldest example of a sentence
written in the Canaanite language in what's now Israel. There
are other examples of Canaanite writing from other parts of
the world, including Syria, but those use a different script.
This sentence is inscribed on a small ivory comb which
dates back to about seventeen hundred b C. And it reads,

(20:06):
may this tusk root out the lice of the hair
and the beard. Some of the things that I read
describing this described that sentence as a spell against lice,
and I'm like, I don't know if it was actually
a spell, but the fact that somebody just wanted to
be super clear that their comb needed to take care
of the lice. I liked that this is a lice comb.

(20:31):
Uh An inscribed Pictish stone has been unearthed in Scotland,
one of only about thirty stones found in Scotland sebaron
inscription in the Oem language. This stone, which also features
a not work cross an animal imagery, was first found
in twenty nineteen, but it was not fully excavated for
another three years. The stone was found in a kirkyard

(20:56):
or a churchyard, but it may be up to fifteen
hundred years years old, meaning it would date back to
before there was a churchyard there. Historians at the University
of Leicester have found a name repeatedly written in a
twelve year old copy of the Acts of the Apostles
from the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It's a

(21:16):
manuscript formerly known as MS. Selden's Super thirty and that
name is Edburgh and it's written in the manuscript at
least fifteen times. Researchers noticed this while using three D
photography and other imaging techniques to examine this manuscript. There
are also some doodles that researchers believed to be connected
to the text and not just random drawings. There were

(21:40):
nine women with this name known to have lived in
England from the seventh to the tenth centuries, and there's
some speculation that this was the one who was known
to have served as an abbess in Kent during the
eighth century. Uh. If so, I've I think that's aascinating
little clue only this person might be. And lastly, researchers

(22:05):
using multi spectral imaging technology believe that they may have
found remnants of a star catalog created by Greek astronomer Hipparchus.
This is in a manuscript called Codex Cleamasira Scriptus, which
is made from pages that were scrubbed out and reused.
So the star catalog is earlier writing that was removed
and then written over, and it contains a passage that's

(22:27):
usually attributed to Greek astronomer Eratosthenes, but estimates of when
this work was written down make it more likely to
be the work of Hipparchus around one b c. E.
Now we are going to move on to some edibles
and potables. First, a watermelon seed from a cave in
Libya has provided some clues about the domestication of watermelons

(22:51):
and how people ate them in the past. About six
thousand years ago, people used this cave to take shelter
with their sheep, and the rye salty air in the
cave preserved things like watermelon seeds that otherwise would have
decomposed long long ago. The wild watermelon that the seed

(23:11):
came from was probably very bitter, so unlike today when
a lot of people eat watermelon pulp but not the seeds,
people probably would have been eating the seeds but not
the pulp. The first evidence of people eating watermelon pulp
is from Egypt about four thousand years ago, and by
that point it had likely been cultivated to be sweeter.

(23:31):
Today's watermelon seeds are actually edible and can be consumed
raw or roasted. Also sprouted. I think, uh, I do
not care for watermelons, so I've never tried any of
these things. You can have all of the watermelon anytime
we are together. The gasp I just made. Yeah, we
can talk more about melons on Friday. Maybe. Archaeologists working

(23:55):
at the Colosseum in Rome have found evidence of what
people were knacking on during events there. They found traces
of food dating back nineteen hundred years, including the seeds
and pits from cherries, peaches, olives, grapes, figs, and blackberries.
They also found bones from various animals, although in some

(24:16):
cases these may have been animals that were used as
part of the entertainment there rather than animals that were
used as food. Researchers analyzing stone tools from China believe
they have found the earliest evidence of tools used for
rice harvesting, and this may feel like gap in knowledge
of how and when rice was first domesticated in China.

(24:37):
Rice is a seed, and before rice was domesticated in China,
the plants dropped their seeds once they were ripe, but
domesticated plants held onto their seeds until a person harvested them.
Researchers already knew that people were domesticating rice in China
by about ten thousand years ago, but there wasn't archaeological
evidence of tools used to harvest it. But archaeologist had

(25:00):
found small stone flakes small enough to hold in your hands,
some of them with sharp edges. They had found these
that several sites dating back to about that same time
period when we know people were domesticating rice, but don't
have a lot of evidence of the tools they were
using to do it. So this led to the hypothesis
that at least some of these flaked stones might have

(25:22):
been used to remove the rice seeds from the plant.
When examined under a microscope, some of these flakes had
where patterns similar to the ones that are found on
tools that we do know are used to harvest plants
that are rich in silica. Researchers also looked for residues
on the stones and they found fighterlith residues. There's their

(25:43):
residues from the silica structures that are found on plants
like rice. They found those residues on twenty eight of
the stones. It is possible that these pieces of stone
were used in a couple of different ways to harvest
the seeds from the rice plants. They have a couple
of different general shapes. So we will talk more after

(26:04):
a sponsor break, including talking about one of my favorite
subjects art. We are closing out this installment of Earth
with some arts and then some animals. First, late last year,
there was a lot of coverage of a group of

(26:25):
twenty four just beautifully preserved bronze statues found in Italy.
The coverage about that was not just because the statues
themselves were so well preserved, but because they may shed
some new light on the historical relationship between the Etruscan
and Roman civilizations. These date back to the period when

(26:47):
this region was transitioning from Etruscan rule to Roman rule,
and these statues show both Etruscan and Roman influence, including
some of them depicting Greca Roman odds and some of
them being inscribed with the names of prominent Etruscan families.
This area is home to thermal springs, and the statues

(27:10):
had been placed in the thermal waters. It's not entirely
clear why. One idea is that they may have been
meant as some kind of offering. It's also not clear
why this site wasn't destroyed or converted to a church
after Christianity became the Roman Empire's official religion and bathing
sites like this one we're all shut down regardless, The

(27:31):
statues wound up covered in mud and then left undisturbed,
which kept them well preserved for more than two thousand years.
There are a lot of pictures of them, and they
really aren't gorgeous. Next up, I'm already laughing because this
is funny to me. The National Gallery of Art has
concluded that the painting Girl with a Flute, which has

(27:52):
long been credited to Johannes's vermir and it sure looks
like a Vermiir, is not really a Vermier. This came
about after conservators and scientists took advantage of the galley's
closure during the early months the COVID nineteen pandemic to
analyze paintings in the collection, including four paintings that were
attributed to Vermer. Imaging technology revealed that while the painting

(28:16):
pretty outwardly resembles Vermeer's work, its brush strokes are messier
and less precise. Conservators believed that the painting was made
by someone who worked with Vermeer, but that raises even
more questions since he is not known to have worked
with assistants or students. Another possibility is that it was

(28:36):
made by his daughter Maria, who would have been between
the ages of fifteen and twenty one when this painting
was made, and in almost a reverse of that scenario,
an oil sketch known as The Raising of the Cross
was long attributed to Rembrandt, but about fifty years ago
art historians started to suspect that it was really someone

(28:57):
else's work. Some went so far as to call it
a crude imitation of a Rembrandt, but a two year
study of this sketch has concluded that yes, it really
actually is a Rembrandt. To be clear, this is not
to be confused with rembrandt sixty three painting The Raising
of the Cross, which has not been in question. Although

(29:17):
this might seem like it could have been a preliminary
sketch for the sixteen thirty three work, it seems to
have been created about a decade afterward. And lastly, conservators
at the Cincinnati Art Museum have found what maybe a
self portrait of Paul says On hidden under his eighteen
sixty five still life with Bread and Eggs. This came

(29:39):
about after one of the conservators noticed that there were
cracks clustered in two particular areas of the canvas, and
that there was quite paint underneath that looked quite different
from the paint in the visible painting, which is very dark.
An X ray revealed a portrait underneath the visible paint layers.
The museum is where King with experts to try to

(30:01):
learn more about the portrait, and if it is indeed
a self portrait, it's probably one of the earliest depictions
of says On. And to close out our Unearthed, we
have a few finds about animals. First, genetic analysis of
a bone that was discovered in Aralla Cave in Bosque Country,

(30:22):
Spain in five has confirmed that it was the bone
of a domestic dog and carbon fourteen dating puts its
age at roughly seventeen thousand years old. That makes it
one of the earliest domesticated dog bones to be found
so far in Europe. It also suggests that at least
in Western Europe, dog domestication may have started a bit

(30:43):
earlier than previously believed. We've mentioned on Unearthed before there's
constantly new stuff being discovered about dog domestication. So now
we know this was a seventeen thousand year old good
boy or girl. Speaking of good boys and girls being dogs,
archaeologists unearthed several dog bones at the Jamestown Colonial site

(31:06):
in Virginia over a period of three years starting in
two thousand seven. Researchers have extracted mitochondrial DNA from these
bones and found that these animals were more closely related
to indigenous North American dogs than two dogs that the
colonists would have brought with them from Europe. We already
knew that there were dogs in the Americas before the

(31:28):
arrival of colonists from Europe, but there are no known
living descendants of these dogs today. Preliminary analysis of this
find suggests that the dogs that were indigenous to the
Americas were genetically diverse. The dogs at Jamestown don't seem
to be related to dogs whose bones were found in
another nearby colonial village. Researchers hope to fully sequence the

(31:50):
Jamestown dogs DNA to learn more. And lastly, in ninety four,
archaeologists unearthed artwork dating back to the fourteenth century BC
from the North Palace at Amara in Egypt, and one
of the most striking pieces was found in a room
called the green Room. It's a really beautiful picture of birds,

(32:11):
lots of different birds and a marsh full of wild papyrus.
These birds are really beautiful and detailed, but until now
it has not been exactly clear which type of birds
they all were. Some of the birds have been identified,
including some of them being identified as kingfishers and pigeons,

(32:32):
but others were more of a mystery. Conservators who were
trying to preserve this painting in accidentally discolored it. So
researchers worked from a copy that had been made before
that happened. They cross reference the depictions of the artwork
with modern ornithological research and factored in things like artistic license.

(32:53):
I feel like that's a funny thing. There's a mathematical
factor for artistic license. Um, it's not. And they believe
they have pinpointed the species of several previously unidentified birds,
including shrikes and wagtails. They also believe that the artist
marked my greeting birds with a triangle on their tails,
which don't exist on the birds in nature. That's the

(33:15):
end of our unearthed for dogs and birdles, digs and birds.
I have just a great email from Ryan to take
us out. I love this email so much, I'm just
gonna read it. Ryan said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, my
wife introduced me to the podcast way back when we

(33:36):
were dating, and you have become staples of our listening lives,
especially on long road trips. While this probably isn't an
exciting enough tidbit to warrant being read on the show,
which is in no way stopping me from hearing all
of a sudden my head in your voice. I thought
I would share since it is finally something I heard
on the show where I went, hey, I know a thing. Also,

(33:57):
it was a good excuse to send kitty pictures. In
the behind the Scenes Many's Food Safety and Kitties episode,
you brought up the pronunciation of Louis versus Louis, and
mentioned Louis or Louis Armstrong in passing as an example
of using the French pronunciation. I'm a professional jazz musician

(34:20):
and trumpet player, so obviously Louis is a point of
interest for me, and something I learned about him was
that he preferred to be called Louis and the English pronunciation,
rather than Louis as it would be in French. This
stuck with me in part because his reasoning was that
while he was growing up in New Orleans, the Creole

(34:40):
French were considered low class, and he and others of
the time avoided French pronunciations and thus the implied associations.
What has always been funny to me is that he
actually preferred sachem, which was short for satchel mouth, which
he had no issues with. It's jazz. We never promised
it would make sense. He never corrected reporters or promoters

(35:02):
who used the French pronunciation because he was generally non
confrontational and because it was not that big a deal.
But he was apparently consistent about his preference, and went
so far out as to be quoted as saying, only
white people call me Louis. I'm just gonna say that tracks.
I try real hard to be aware of things, but

(35:25):
I am white, and sometimes I'm just gonna white up
the whole place. Anyway. To get back to the email
I first read about this and Terry t Show's biography, Pops,
I'm sorry, I did not look up how to say
that name. I'm sorry if I said it wrong, but
have since I had it confirmed from several sources, including
now colleagues who actually got to play with him. Several

(35:45):
sources like to cite his pronunciation in the opening line
to Hello Dolly, but to be fair, that could arguably
be prioritizing avoiding internal rhyme scheme over his own preferences,
just to make things more confusing, though, even Louis Armstrong
New Orleans International Airport isn't a consistent on their pronunciation.

(36:06):
But if Louis wasn't going to correct promoters, it seems
like he probably wouldn't bother with correcting the airport authority either.
Attached are a couple of favorite pictures of our cat's
Kopa mainly white with a kopa shell pattern on his back,
and his sister Gumba, who was slightly cross side and
a bit of a gumba. They may not know they
love you, but they do. And thanks always for making
such a wonderful, fun and enriching program. Ryan. Thank you

(36:27):
so much Ryan for this email. It was absolutely worth reading.
I loved reading it so much. And then I went
down a whole big rabbit hole about how Louis Armstrong
said his own name. And he did put out an
album at one point I think called Laughing Louis, which
was definitely Louis in that name. But otherwise, yeah, he
does seem to have called himself Louis all the time,

(36:49):
and there were even people really close to him, like
his widow after his death quoted in an interview one
time calling him Louis like it's there seems to be
just a whole lack of con insistency of the pronunciation,
other than he himself saying Louis pretty much all the time. Um.
The the airport in New Orleans I'm pretty sure was

(37:14):
renamed after him after his death, so he would not
have been around to correct the airport authority unless I
am missing something about it, maybe colloquially being called that
before that point. Um, I've flown through that airport, and
reading that part of it triggered a vague, vague memory
of being in the airport and hearing one of those
announcements that's kind of like welcome to Louis Armstrong International Airport,

(37:37):
and my my brain kind of going that was very formal. Uh,
but no, that's really how he said it. And again
I loved this email. And as soon as I got
and I was like, out, I don't know why you
would think this did not weren't being read, because as
soon as I got it, I was like that, I'm
reading this one. Reading this one. Fatma was short for

(38:00):
actual mouth and was a comment on his appearance. But
he apparently thought that was great. Um. And I also,
of course I love the cat pictures. Thank you again, Ryan.
I know I have to sort of effusively refused all
over this email, but I loved it. Uh. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast or history podcasts that I heart radio dot
com and or also all over social media missed in

(38:22):
history that three, I'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram,
and you can subscribe to our show on the I
heart radio app or wherever else you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(38:45):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows