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- [00:00]
Tracy B. Wilson
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
Holly Fry
A new era of power has arrived with the Alienware Area 51 gaming laptops, intentionally engineered to push more power to the CPU and GPU for maximum performance. This otherworldly power, paired with the game changing capabilities of Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs with DLSS4 ensures ultra smooth, stunning gameplay. So no matter what you're playing, Alienware ensures every game runs precisely, precisely as its developers intended. Discover Area 51@Alienware.com Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos, but now the old gays are pulling back the curtain with their new podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays, brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare. Hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse serve their lifetime of wisdom when it comes to love, sex, community and whatever else they've got on the gay agenda. So check out Silver Linings with the old gaze on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:09]
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- [01:41]
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- [02:10]
Tracy B. Wilson
Hey everybody. Before we get into this episode today, it includes some discussion of a rescission package which, when we recorded it, had not been voted on by the US House of Representatives. As of now, it has, and it has passed and has been sent to the President for signature. That signature has not happened as of this moment, but by the time this episode comes out, it most likely will have. So by the time you're hearing it, most likely that rescission package will be law. Just to update everything. And now we will get on to the episode.
- [02:44]
Holly Fry
Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [02:55]
Tracy B. Wilson
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson. And I'm Holly Fry it's time for our quarterly installment of Unearthed. If you are brand new to the show over the last few months, this is when a few times a year we talk about things that have been literally and figuratively unearthed. This time it's once again two part episode. Today we have updates. We have so many updates that it is two thirds of this episode being updates. We also have art finds in this episode and we have a little bit at the end that I'm calling adult content. The last part of this episode has some archeological finds and whatnot that are related to things like drug use and sex. It's a little more mature than often what we talk about on the show. And I just put that at the end of this one so that if you're listening with maybe little kids or in a classroom or whatever and you need to just end the episode there, it will be easy to do it.
- [04:02]
Holly Fry
So smart. So Tracy started out our last installment of Unearthed by talking about actions that were being taken at the federal level here in the US and how those actions were impacting her work on the show and how they might affect the show in the future. And this includes budget cuts and grant freezes affecting academics, researchers and institutions that we rely on for our research. A lot of that is still ongoing and still in flux as university and other institutions reckon with new financial constraints and with federal hostility to the idea of dei. There are still some legal cases related to all of this that are still working their way through the courts.
- [04:45]
Tracy B. Wilson
Some of those cuts have already had an effect on the show. For example, as of July 1, I no longer have access to a long list of databases, several of which I have been using for many, many years, which were being funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services Grants to States program. As we talked about last time, the IMLS was targeted by an executive order. Its entire staff was placed on leave. But the Congress also passed a budget and spending bill that was signed into law on July 4th. That's of course connected to all of this since we are recording this just a couple of weeks after I lost access to those databases. Like, I'm not really sure what the next step is with it. And the President has also asked for a rescission package in addition to that budget that was already passed that would cancel additional funds that were already previously allocated. This precision package that's still in the works. It is expected to target foreign aid and public media. The foreign aid cuts aren't really directly related to our podcast, which is what we've been kind of sticking with with these updates, but given the scope, it just seems weird to me to not mention them at all. Research that was published in the Lancet at the end of June concludes that cuts just to the United States Agency for International Development will lead to the deaths of 14 million people around the world who otherwise would have lived by the year 2030. In terms of this rescission package and what does directly apply to our show, we really cannot count the number of times we have cited reporting and documentaries and other work from NPR and pbs. I just went into the file where I have all of our old outlines and I put the words NPR and PBS in there to see how often they showed up in source lists. It again was too many to count, so hundreds. The idea of losing funding for those is something else likely to affect the show.
- [06:56]
Holly Fry
Also still in the works are federal departments taking steps to align with the Executive Orders that we talked about last time, one of those being the one that's called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. I get a stomach ache just saying that. Executive orders are basically memos from the President to the federal government about how to operate. And then it is up to the relevant departments to figure out how to implement those instructions. To that end, in May, the Secretary of the interior issued Order 3431, also titled restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. And this order reiterated the Administration's policy to, quote, restore federal sites dedicated to history to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect union, an unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing. The Secretary's order then gave directions to the heads of the government's land management Bureaus, including the National Park Service, on the concrete steps to take to implement the Executive Order.
- [08:07]
Tracy B. Wilson
These steps include reviewing and reporting on changes to quote, any public monuments, memorials, statues, markers or similar properties that had happened since January 1st of 2020, as well as reviewing those properties for, quote, inappropriate content and removing content that is inconsistent with the purposes of that Executive Order.
- [08:30]
Holly Fry
The Secretary's order also instructed the Land Management Bureaus to post signs throughout each property with a QR code that links visitors to a form they can fill out at a government website. The signs read, quote, name of property belongs to the American people and name of Land Management Bureau wants your feedback. Please let us know if you have identified one. Any areas of of the park area etc as appropriate that need repair. 2. Any services that need improvement. 3. Any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.
- [09:15]
Tracy B. Wilson
Just to spell this out as just one example, there are now signs at places like Manzanar National Historic Site, which was the site of a concentration camp where the United States imprisoned Japanese immigrants and their U.S. citizen children during World War II. And those signs instruct visitors to report negative signage they see at the park. We talked about these concentration camps in our two part episode on Executive Order 9066 on February 12th and 14th of 2017. Also, there are so many people who work in interpretive roles at parks and historic sites who have talked really publicly about visitors finding things like any mention of slavery whatsoever at a site as cause for outrage. We have seen this over the years in our own email. Yeah.
- [10:13]
Holly Fry
On June 18th of this year, the Organization of American Historians, which is a professional society for the teaching and studying of U.S. u.S. History, issued a statement in response to this order saying that it, quote, represents a clear and troubling intrusion into the integrity of historical presentation within the National Park Service. That statement went on to say, quote, the directive demands that the NPS revise educational materials, exhibits and programs to avoid what it calls ideological bias, language that in practice seeks to sanitize complex histories of race, environment, gender and sexuality, immigration, indigeneity, labor and religion. The directive further undermines the NPS's long standing mission to present inclusive, evidence based and publicly accessible history.
- [11:06]
Tracy B. Wilson
The Organization of American Historians statement also responded directly to that signage we just mentioned. Quote, national parks have been and remain enormously popular with Americans, and visitors to NPS sites have always been free to voice their opinions about programming and their experiences through the NPS website, comment cards and other mechanisms. This new directive is a manufactured crisis. It evokes tactics of authoritarian regimes, not principles of a democratic society. The OAH also recommended its members make use of those same forms to recommend improvements that will, quote, make the histories told at NPS sites accurate, more inclusive and more democratic.
- [11:52]
Holly Fry
The American Historical association, which is a professional association for historians, endorsed this statement. The OOAH and the AHA had also issued a joint statement in March about the executive orders and policies that we talked about last time, which was signed by nearly 30 professional and academic associations connected to the field of history, including the National Council on Public History and the World History Association.
- [12:20]
Tracy B. Wilson
Moving on to other updates, we have an episode on Hatshepsut that we ran as a Saturday Classic on April 26. One of the things that we talked about in that episode is that after Hatshepsut's death. Her successor, Thutmose iii, whose name we have also heard pronounced just Thutmose, had her name removed from the official list of kings and ordered the destruction of statues and other depictions of her. When her mortuary temple was rediscovered in the 19th century, archaeologists didn't initially know who she was. And once they started piecing that together, they concluded that she must have been some kind of stereotypical wicked stepmother figure and that Thutmose must have ordered this destruction out of anger or vengeance.
- [13:09]
Holly Fry
Historians and archaeologists started revising that view in the 1960s after Egyptologist Charles Nims pinpointed this destruction as starting 20 years after Hatshepsut's death or possibly even later, making it unlikely something that was motivated out of fury. We gave some other possible reasons for this destruction, including that there might have been concerns about the strength of the claims of Thutmose's successor, Amenhotep ii to the throne, or that it was connected to greater concerns about the appropriateness of a woman acting as king.
- [13:44]
Tracy B. Wilson
Research published in the journal Antiquity in June casts further doubt on the idea that hostility was a factor in the statue destruction, noting that a lot of statues of Hatshepsut are in relatively good condition and many of those that were broken were broken across the across the waist, the neck and the knees. And that's something that was also done to the statues of other Egyptian kings, possibly as part of a ritual deactivation of the statue and the power associated with it.
- [14:18]
Holly Fry
At the same time, the paper's author, Juni Wong of the University of Toronto gave a statement to Live Science that included this quote. There is no doubt that Hatshepsut did suffer a campaign of persecution at many monuments throughout Egypt. Her images and names have been systematically hacked out. We know that this campaign of persecution was initiated by Thutmose iii, but we are not exactly sure why.
- [14:45]
Tracy B. Wilson
As is so often the case on Unearthed, there was a lot of reporting around this paper and a lot of that reporting frames it as conclusively resolving a long standing mystery. But aside from the idea of ritually deactivating Egyptian statues, a lot of what's in this paper is not actually that different from what we talked about in the episode. Also, again, this paper is only about the destruction of the statues, not the other elements of it that the paper describes as, quote, the wider campaign of persecution enacted following her death.
- [15:22]
Holly Fry
We have more updates coming up, but first let's take a quick sponsor break. Foreign.
- [15:31]
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- [16:31]
Holly Fry
Power has arrived with the Alienware Area 51 Gaming laptops intentionally engineered to push more power to the CPU and GPU for maximum performance. This otherworldly power, paired with the game changing capabilities of Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs with DLSS4amplifies performance and image precision for ultra smooth, stunning gameplay. And with the new Cryo chamber design, airflow is focused exactly where it's needed most. Fused with Alienware's enhanced thermal solutions, it creates a higher power output without raising noise levels, allowing you to play with confidence even during the most demanding marathon gaming sessions. So no matter what you're playing, Alienware ensures every game runs precisely as its developers intended. A new era of power is here. All you have to do is take it. Discover Area 51 today@alienware.com Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos, but now the old gays pull back the curtain on their brand new podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays, brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare. With over 300 years of experience between them, hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse serve four lifetimes of wisdom when it comes to love, sex, community and whatever else they've got on the gay agenda. Listen in to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo, as well as insights on how music, art and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:35]
High Key Ad
Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast.
- [18:37]
You better listen. That's literally the definition of being an Aries moon.
- [18:41]
Just one little spicy off comment, that's all it takes. Everyone loves me at the Cancer and then the Aries comes out and they said noodles, is that no you're gonna come for me being an Aries and you have a Sag moon?
- [18:55]
Tracy B. Wilson
Get out of here.
- [18:55]
High Key Ad
But I'm a Capricorn rising, so that honestly balances it out and makes me more likable.
- [19:00]
Okay, that is your Capricorn talking. Listen to High key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:19]
Tracy B. Wilson
Pompeii was covered on the show in October of 2009, and we've had a lot of updates about it on Unearthed. Most recently, archaeologists excavating a tomb at the Porto Sarno Necropolis in Pompeii found two nearly life sized relief sculptures next to each other in a niche in a wall. One of these sculptures depicts a woman wearing a tunic and a cloak, along with earrings, rings, bracelets and a pendant that's shaped like a crescent moon. She's holding what looks like a laurel branch and a roll of papyrus, and then all of this together means that the woman being depicted might have been a priestess of Ceres. The other statue next to her is of a man wearing a toga, and other than the fact that the toga suggests that he was a Roman citizen, less has been speculated about him. The depiction just is not as detailed or elaborate. It's possible that these two were a married couple, but we don't really know. This was unearthed last year, but it wasn't reported on until this spring.
- [20:26]
Holly Fry
In other Pompeii news, archaeologists at Pompeii Archaeological park have released a statement about work at the House of Hale Amphrix, named for a fresco in the dining room of the home. Excavations at the home suggest that during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, four people in the home attempted to take refuge in a small room, which they barricaded with a bed frame to keep out volcanic debris. At some point it probably became obvious that they would have to flee if they hoped to survive, but by that point they were not able to get out of the house. We do not actually know who these people were, though they may have been the owners of the home, or they could have been people who tried to take shelter there after the inhabitants had already fled.
- [21:12]
Tracy B. Wilson
Something else that has made frequent appearances on Unearthed is the Roman fort Vindolanda, south of Hadrian's Wall in northern England. Volunteer diggers working there have uncovered a sandstone relief carving that's believed to be the goddess Victory, which might have been part of a much larger carving adorning one of the fort's barracks. Most likely when it was created, this carving was very brightly painted and there's some research underway to see if there are any traces of paint still there. Not really any traces visible to the naked eye, but they might be at the microscopic level. This carving is also planned to be on display at Vindolanda in 2026. A new dig just started there earlier this month, so we may have some more finds from this fort next time.
- [22:03]
Holly Fry
Antony Gaudi, who we covered in a two part episode in January of 2015, was declared Venerable by the late Pope Francis in April, before Francis passed. This is the second of four steps that are part of his potentially being recognized as a saint. Gaudi's most famous architectural work, the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, is still under construction. Construction started in 1882 and the most recent estimates suggest that it might be finished within a decade. One major issue that still persists at this point is that finishing a planned stairway will require evicting about 3,000 people from their homes in the areas adjacent to the basilica and demolishing those residences.
- [22:49]
Tracy B. Wilson
Prior hosts of the show talked about the Vasa in their episode More Shipwreck stories battleships in 2011 the Vasa was a Swedish warship that sank shortly after setting sail on its very first voyage in 1628, but then it was raised and preserved and is now housed at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. So we've talked about this ship in several previous installments of unearthed, including in 2023 when we talked about the vessel urgently needing a new support structure. The museum opened in 1990, but the support structure for the vessel was built in the 1960s and by now it was starting to sag.
- [23:31]
Holly Fry
Work on that has now begun as part of a four year restoration project. The ship's new support will be both lighter and stronger than the earlier one, as well as resistant to corrosion, and it will also put less pressure on the ship itself. This is a multi phase project involving the installation of exterior support cradles and then an internal skeleton to reinforce the ship. The restoration project is expected to be complete in time for the 400th anniversary of the ship's sinking that will take place in 2028.
- [24:05]
Tracy B. Wilson
Next the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in April. Congress voted to make this award back in 2022, but due to some logistical delays, the actual ceremony did not take place until April 29th of this year. We alluded to this ceremony in a listener mail that I read earlier this year, but I did not get into the specifics of what we were talking about because it just wasn't clear to me at that point whether the ceremony, which had not happened yet, whether that was supposed to be public knowledge yet. The medal was presented to descendants of Lt. Col. Charity Adams early, who was the battalion's commanding officer, and there were more than 300 descendants of members of the 6888 at the ceremony. Our episode on the 6888 ran as a Saturday classic on March 26, 2022.
- [24:59]
Holly Fry
Researchers in Australia have examined a set of swords from the West African kingdom of Dahomey. We talked about this kingdom in our episodes on the Palaces of Abome and the all female fighting force colloquially known as the Amazons on July 22 and August 5 of 2015. These swords are associated with the Amazons, but they also have some design elements that are found in swords from other parts of the world, including Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. So it hasn't been clear whether these swords were locally made or whether they might be imported.
- [25:36]
Tracy B. Wilson
This team used an assortment of non invasive testing methods, including neutron tomography, powder diffraction, full pattern analysis, and diffraction residual stress measurements. Based on all of this work, they concluded that these swords were locally made, possibly from locally smelted iron, but that they did have some influences or inspiration that came from European imports. This research also suggests that the forging techniques that were used for some of these swords was unique to the kingdom.
- [26:07]
Holly Fry
In our unearthed installment in the fall of 2022, we talked about a burial site that had been discovered in southern Germany. A child had been entombed at this site, which was sealed so well that sediments were not able to penetrate it and form layers around the contents inside. So that meant that the site was well preserved but also extremely delicate. Archaeologists flash froze the entire interior of the tomb with liquid nitrogen so they could remove the entire block and transport it elsewhere without jostling or damaging its contents, leading this child to be nicknamed the Ice Prince.
- [26:45]
Tracy B. Wilson
Research into this burial site has now been carried out. First, the block had to be thawed in an environment that was very carefully controlled for temperature and humidity. Researchers confirmed that this child died toward the end of the 7th century and was only about 18 months old when that happened based on the analysis of the remains. This child likely died of sepsis following an ear infection, but the family was probably wealthy and prominent. This child was dressed in linen trimmed with silk, along with having leather shoes on, and was laid to rest on furs. Silver and gold accessories and jewelry were found in the gravesite as well. There was also a short sword, a bronze basin, a comb, a wooden bowl, a cup, and some food offerings. There were also some animal bones in this gravesite which were initially thought to be from a dog, but it turns out they were really from a piglet.
- [27:42]
Holly Fry
Our episode on the Nazca Lines in Peru ran as a Saturday classic in February of 2021. These etchings of animals, plants and geometric figures were created roughly 2,000 years ago, and they were named as a UNESCO World heritage site in 1994. In May, Peru's Ministry of Culture announced a plan to cut the amount of protected land around the Nazca lines by about 40%. That's something that led to concern and criticism due to fears that it would leave the site more vulnerable to illegal mining operations, which are already a known issue in the area. The areas affected are not within the part that's been inscribed by UNESCO, but experts who work with the Nazca Line said that the areas that were being removed from the protections that contains some of the oldest and most delicate etchings.
- [28:32]
Tracy B. Wilson
Then in June, the government of Peru announced that it was dropping that plan and leaving the protected area unchanged. It did not abandon the idea of changing the borders of the protected area, though. The Peruvian Ministry of Culture also said that a panel was being convened, including archaeologists, academics and members of international organizations, including UNESCO, to evaluate future plans for zoning and land use in the area.
- [29:02]
Holly Fry
And our last update, we covered Greenwood, Oklahoma, known as Black Wall street, and its 1921 destruction by a white mob in an episode that we ran as a Saturday Classic on November 9, 2019. We have also talked about the search for the grave sites of victims of this massacre on multiple installments of Unearthed now, the city of Tulsa has announced a $105 million reparations plan called Road to Repair. It was announced by Monroe Nichols, Tulsa's first black mayor, during the city's first Tulsa Race Massacre observance day. During his address, Nichols noted that the economic harms caused by the massacre were compounded by other issues, including the building of a highway and the practice of redlining, which is something else we have talked about on the show in a two parter in October of 2015.
- [29:54]
Tracy B. Wilson
As of June 12th when the last reporting on this happened, there were two known survivors of the massacre still living, both of them more than 110 years old. They had previously sought compensation under Oklahoma laws, but those efforts were ultimately dismissed by the state Supreme Court last year. This repatriation plan does not involve direct cash payments to either of them. Instead, it is focused on creating a private charitable trust to address the impacts of the attack on Tulsa's black communities, which are still present today. It's proposed to include a $24 million fund for housing and housing assistance meant to counteract the generational impact of the loss of all of those lives and homes and businesses. There's also a $60 million historic preservation fund and 21 million dollar fund for things like scholarships, small business grants and land acquisition and development. That's all planned to be part of this. That last part of the funding will also be used to pay for the ongoing efforts to find and identify victims of the massacre. Funds have to be raised for this trust and it is hoped for that to be completed over the next year.
- [31:12]
Holly Fry
Art is on the horizon, but first we're going to pause for a sponsor break.
- [31:19]
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- [32:20]
Holly Fry
A new era of power has arrived with the Alienware Area 51 Gaming laptops intentionally engineered to push more power to the CPU and GPU for maximum performance. This otherworldly power, paired with the game changing capabilities of Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs with DLSS4amplifies performance and image precision for ultra smooth stunning gameplay. And with the new cryo chamber design, airflow is focused exactly where it's needed most. Fused with Alienware's enhanced thermal solutions, it creates a higher power output without raising noise levels, allowing you to play with confidence even during the most demanding marathon gaming sessions. So no matter what you're playing, Alienware ensures every game runs precisely as its developers intended. A new era of power is here. All you have to do is take it. Discover Area 51 today@alienware.com Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos, but now the Old Gays pull back the curtain on their brand new podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays, brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare. With over 300 years of experience between them, hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse serve four lifetimes of wisdom when it comes to love, sex, community and whatever else they've got on the gay agenda. Listen in to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo, as well as insights on how music, art and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine. Available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [34:24]
High Key Ad
High Key Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast.
- [34:27]
You better listen. That's literally the definition of being an Aries moon.
- [34:31]
Just one little spicy off comment, that's all it takes. Everyone loves me at the cancer and then the Aries comes out and they.
- [34:39]
Tracy B. Wilson
Said who the is that?
- [34:41]
High Key Ad
No you're gonna come for me being an Aries and you have a sag moon.
- [34:45]
Holly Fry
Get outta here.
- [34:45]
High Key Ad
But I'm a Capricorn rising so that honestly balances it out and makes me more likable.
- [34:50]
Okay, that is your Capricorn talking. Listen to High key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [35:09]
Tracy B. Wilson
Now we've got a number of art related finds. First, work on a bedroom at a hunting lodge called the Ashes in Inglewood Forest in Cumbria, England has revealed Tudor era wall paintings under some old plaster. These are black and white paintings. They depict strange animals and kind of weird foliage. This was pretty common for wall paintings at the time. One description of the wall paintings of this era calls them, quote, an unnatural or unorderly composition for delight's sake, which I love. Even with that unnatural unorderly composition in mind, though, experts have described the combination of MOT in These particular paintings as unusual.
- [36:00]
Holly Fry
Based on when the house was built, it's likely that these paintings were created during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. While these specific wall paintings are a new find, it's not entirely surprising that they were there. Similar paintings have been found in other parts of the lodge during earlier work going back to the 1970s. At the same time, though, not many Tudor era wall paintings survive at this point, particularly in this part of England. The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport has granted additional protections to the lodge and its surrounding buildings.
- [36:36]
Tracy B. Wilson
In other wall painting news, digs at a Roman villa on the Mediterranean coast of Spain have unearthed a wall painting dating back to the second century ce. But this wall has collapsed. So archaeologists have found this painting in about 4,000 pieces. While conservators are trying to reassemble this painting, it is a painstaking process. One of the panels that they've separated the pieces out for has 866 pieces. And as of the news reporting on this in late April, only 22 of those pieces had been put back together into one thing. And they formed a floral garland with birds and a painted molding along the top.
- [37:19]
Holly Fry
In 2023, a park supervisor on a climbing trip in Itachiaya national park in Brazil spotted some previously unknown cave art. And the find was just announced to the public earlier this year. It is still very, very early in the process of studying this art. It is believed to be between 2,000 or 3,000 years old, but experts are not sure about that yet. There's also an ongoing search to try to find other cave art in the area, since in this part of the world, caves and rock shelters with artwork are not usually found in isolation. So that is very early in the process as well. Hopefully it will come up again on a future unearthed.
- [37:59]
Tracy B. Wilson
Yeah, I just, I like that a park supervisor just happened to be doing non work things and was like, oh, rock art here.
- [38:09]
Holly Fry
I should tell somebody.
- [38:10]
Tracy B. Wilson
You should let everybody know. Next. Renovation work on the plaster facade of a building near the Rialto Bridge in Venice has uncovered a previously unknown mural that dates back to the 16th century. These kinds of murals on the exteriors of buildings were very common in Venice around this time, but very few of them have survived until today because of Venice's high humidity levels and very salty air, as well as, you know, the passage of time, other construction and renovation projects that destroyed many of them.
- [38:47]
Holly Fry
This mural depicts three allegorical figures whose meaning has not been deciphered yet. It's been described as an example of lost heritage, but it was Also in very poor condition when it was found, including fading of the colors and pitting of the surface. Conservation work has been ongoing with experts working to identify and recreate its original colors and elements.
- [39:12]
Tracy B. Wilson
Next, the Bronte Parsonage Museum has acquired a painting by Emily Bronte, who was of better known for her novel Wuthering Heights. She created the painting called the north wind in 1842 while she was studying at a boarding school in Brussels. It's based on an engraving from Findon's illustration of the life and works of Lord Byron. This is a portrait depicting a woman with curly brown hair and that hair seems to be flowing in the wind. She similarly has a wind blown blue cape around her shoulders.
- [39:45]
Holly Fry
While Emily Bronte is known to have taken art lessons while living in Brussels, there aren't many pieces by her surviving today. After a bidding war, the museum bought the painting at auction for £32,000. That's roughly $42,000 which was more than £10,000 above the pre auction estimates. The painting is going to be conserved and then placed on display at the museum.
- [40:11]
Tracy B. Wilson
While we're on the subject of the Brontes, the birthplace of Anne Branwell, Charlotte and Emily in Bradford, England before the family moved to the Parsonage has been restored and opened as a public museum. And there is also a plan for people to be able to stay there in the bedrooms as overnight guests.
- [40:32]
Holly Fry
Are you booking your trip?
- [40:34]
Tracy B. Wilson
Well, I wanted to, but when I tried to get information about when that will actually be possible, I did not find a concrete explanation.
- [40:44]
Holly Fry
You just plan ahead. It'll be great. According to research published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, the Milky Way may be depicted in an ancient Egyptian artwork and it may have had some kind of connection to the sky goddess N. This research examined depictions of Newt found on ancient Egyptian coffins. Newt is often depicted as a nude woman adorned with stars or solar disks arched over the earth God who is her brother, whose name is either Geb or Jeb. I'm not 100% sure, but on one of the coffins, Newt's body has an undulating black curve adorned with stars. This paper interprets this dark star studded curve as possibly representing the Milky Way and the dark band of dust around it.
- [41:31]
Tracy B. Wilson
And lastly, work done by a London based dentist has added a new layer to the interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci's famous Vitruvian mane. That's the one of a nude male figure superimposed with his arms and legs in two different positions situated within a circle and a square.
- [41:52]
Holly Fry
This is A representation of idealized body proportions. But Leonardo da Vinci didn't explain the ratios behind what he depicted. In a paper published in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, Rory Mac Sweeney notes that there's an equilateral triangle formed by the figure's legs. Legs, something that Leonardo also referenced in his text. Sweeney connects that triangle to Bonwell's triangle, which is a concept from dental and facial anatomy. That's an equilateral triangle formed by the mandibular condyles at the point where the middle bottom teeth meet. Incorporating this triangle into the calculations helped produce a ratio of 1.64 to 1.65 between the side of the square and the radius of the circle. That is very close to the number 1.633, which is often found in nature, especially in very efficient structures like hexagonal close packed crystals. It's also close to ratios that are part of the human cranium.
- [42:53]
Tracy B. Wilson
Bonwell's triangle was described by William Gibson arlington Bonwell in 1864, more than 350 years after the creation of the Vitruvian Man. So if there really is a connection here, this triangle may be something that Leonardo da Vinci observed hundreds of years before it was described by dentists.
- [43:17]
Holly Fry
All right, it's time for adult content. So we're closing out part one of Unearthed with what Tracy is calling adult content, meaning a little more risque than the beer and wine finds that we often talk about on Unearthed. So if you listen with younger folks, this might be something to pre screen and as Tracy mentioned at the top going at the end of the episode. So you could just stop it right here if you want. First, researchers from the University of Florida have published work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggest that an ancient civilization in the Andes Mountains in Peru, dating back about 2,000 years before the Inca empire, used hallucinogens to help maintain the social order.
- [44:01]
Tracy B. Wilson
This conclusion came from the study of tubes that were made from hollow bones and were found at a prehistoric ceremonial site. Analysis of the interiors of these tubes found traces of nicotine, which of course would have come from a wild relative of tobacco and vilcabine residue, which is a source of the hallucinogen dmt.
- [44:22]
Holly Fry
These tubes were found in private rooms that would have held only a few people at a time. In the words of study co author Daniel Contreras, quote, taking psychoactives was not just about seeing visions. It was part of a tightly controlled ritual, likely reserved for a select few, reinforcing the social hierarchy.
- [44:43]
Tracy B. Wilson
Next, researchers Working with the Bayou Tapestry have been trying to determine whether there is a greater meaning behind the penises depicted on the embroidery. According to George Garnett, a professor of medieval history at Oxford University, there are 93 penises on the embroidery, and 88 of them belong to horses and five to human men. Three of the horse penises are larger than all the rest. One belonging to the horse of Duke William, AKA William the Conqueror, which is the biggest. The horse of Harold Godwinson, the Anglo Saxon king of England, has the next largest penis, and then the horse of Odo of Bay, William's half brother, is the third largest. The condition is that the size of the penises of these horses is an indicator of these three men's relative importance.
- [45:35]
Holly Fry
The human genitalia is shown in figures along the embroidery's border, and all of them are on men who are engaged in sexual activity. And it's all activity that would have been seen as shameful or taboo. Garnett has connected these depictions to stories and fables that are all about deceit, betrayal and shame. His conclusion is that there's something of a code meant to suggest that the historical events being illustrated in the rest of the tapestry are suspect. That means the tapestry likely wasn't commissioned by Odo of Bayeux, often cited as the most likely person to have commissioned the embroidery, because Odo would not have wanted those elements of shame and deceit to be a part of it.
- [46:20]
Tracy B. Wilson
It past hosts put out an episode on this tapestry, which, again, is really an embroidery, on July 27, 2011, and it has made several appearances on Unearthed. I think this is the first time we have talked about any penises on there.
- [46:36]
Holly Fry
I feel like it gets name checked a lot in historical talk, and there is not very frequently a mention of any of the more adult parts of it.
- [46:46]
Tracy B. Wilson
Yeah, this. I don't remember if it was the paper or if it was like interviews related to the paper, but it was pointed out that most of the discussion has been more about how later people working with this textile, like, tried to minimize the size of them to be a little more discreet. I love it.
- [47:09]
Holly Fry
Moving on. Back in the 1990s, excavations ahead of a construction project unearthed a 14th century brothel in Belgium. During this work, a burial site was also uncovered, one of a baby about 3 months old. This raised questions of whether this baby might have been the victim of infanticide. But recent analysis of this has come to a different conclusion. That the baby had been well nourished and well cared for during its short life, including probably being breastfed and that it likely died of a disease. Researchers did not find evidence of a number of bacterial illnesses, so it's possible that the cause of death was viral. It's not entirely clear why this baby wasn't buried in a cemetery, but there is some speculation that his mother just wanted him nearby, so she buried him near the hearth where he would be warm and safe. This also suggests that at least some women doing sex work were able to keep their own children nearby and to care for them in their infancy.
- [48:13]
Tracy B. Wilson
And lastly for today's episode, In November of last year, curators at the Rijksmuseum acquired a 19th century condom, likely made from a sheep's appendix and decorated with a very bawdy image that some people would also interpret as sacrilegious. Since it involves a nun and male clergy in a sexual situation, this condom might have been a souvenir condom from a brothel. This was the first condom to ever become part of the Rijksmuseum collection. There was actually no way to catalog a condom into the collection before this, and it became part of an exhibit on 19th century sex work called Safe Sex, which started earlier this year.
- [49:00]
Holly Fry
This led the Catholic Foundation Civitas Christiana to protest outside the museum and to start a petition to have the condom removed.
- [49:10]
Tracy B. Wilson
We will have more unearthed on Wednesday.
- [49:13]
Holly Fry
Do you have listener mail Today I do.
- [49:15]
Tracy B. Wilson
I have listener mail. I did not intentionally look for an episode about national parks after our conversation about national parks at the beginning of the episode, but that's kind of where we are in the Catching up on listener email and it, it's, you know, makes it particularly relevant. So this is from Sarah. Sarah wrote hi ladies, Writing to you from the Big Meadows Lodge at Shenandoah National Park. While I've loved every podcast you released since I started listening 10 plus years ago, your recent episode on Skyline Drive and Shenandoah was particularly timely as my husband took me here for my grad school graduation present and we saved the episode for our drive in Given the complicated history of the park's founding you shared, I was very interested to see how the park would tell its own story. I am pleased to report that the visitor center we frequented does not disappoint. Their exhibits are transparent about imminent domain forcing people out of their homes, the racial segregation in the park's early years, and the current challenges to the local ecosystems wrought by pollution and climate change. I also spoke with a lovely ranger who told me about the hundred plus cemeteries throughout Shenandoah, many of which are overgrown and inactive. Is that the right word? Dormant retired, but others still have family members in the valleys who visit frequently and even plan to be buried there themselves. Learning their stories and those of the indigenous peoples here has been a valuable reminder that these parks have their own histories for many people and cultures that are far deeper than than my own little national park's passport stamp. Finally, the ranger told me how his own home in Alabama has been seized by eminent domain for a highway when he was a teenager, and he used his grandparents address to be able to attend the final two years at the school he'd attended since he was a child. Ironically, his grandfather had participated in the Civilian Conservation Corps as a young man. I wonder if a history of eminent domain might perhaps be one for the episode ideas. Listen, thank you for all you do, and I especially appreciate how you have contextualized your episodes recently with current events making each that much more relevant to our everyday lives. In lieu of my own Sweet Kitty as Pet Tax, please enjoy the attached shot of some of the residents at Pittsburgh Squealers, a pig rescue and rehabilitation center near us in the Pittsburgh area. They enjoyed so many pets during our recent group visit, even as they mistook our fingers for carrots. Cheers, Sarah P.S. we also replayed your episode on John Brown's raid on this trip as we stopped at Harpers Ferry on our drive to Shenandoah. Thank you for helping us appreciate the complexities of that site before we even got out of the car. Oh my goodness.
- [52:13]
High Key Ad
Piggies.
- [52:14]
Tracy B. Wilson
Two pigs. A black pig and a white pig. More like gray, maybe. Boy, do they look excited to be greeting visitors. Pittsburgh Squealers. What a great name. Pig Rescue and Rehabilitation Center What a great thing to have these pigs look fairly small. If I had to guess, I would think that they might be that like pet pigs, not farm pigs that people maybe got and found that they could not adequately deal with. That is just my guess. They could also be bebes still, maybe so. They're lil.
- [52:57]
Holly Fry
They're real cute.
- [52:58]
Tracy B. Wilson
Relatively speaking. They're.
- [52:59]
Holly Fry
Yeah, they're about knee high.
- [53:01]
Tracy B. Wilson
I would like to see one eating a plate of spaghetti, maybe wearing a tiny hat. Thank you so much for this email, Sarah. Fortuitous that it happened to align with another discussion of the National Park Service at the top of this episode. That pair of episodes about Skyline Drive and Shenandoah and then the Blue Ridge Parkway were kind of a love letter to the National Park Service. I might have said that already, while also trying to acknowledge the more complicated parts of their history. I don't know if we could do a history of eminent domain because I have not really thought about whether that would be like a local to the US episode or like a more global episode. I don't actually know how eminent domain works in other places or if it does work in other places. I also though have had a family member who was part of an eminent domain dispute involving the widening of a road. There are a lot of things that exist in the United States because of eminent domain, including a lot, a lot, a lot of parks and roads just as examples. So thank you again Sarah for this email. I hope your trip was great, man. I hope you get to just love on these pigs as often as you want. If you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're at history podcast@iheartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iheartradio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Holly Fry
He never thought he was going to get caught and I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases.
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- [56:02]
Holly Fry
Did George Washington really cut down a cherry tree?
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Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair?
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And I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question.
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This is such a ridiculous story.
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- [56:23]
Tracy B. Wilson
I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that.
- [56:30]
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Meant for my heart. Podcasts and Rococo Punch this is the Turning River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning river road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [56:53]
Tracy B. Wilson
This is an iHeart podcast.