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- [00:00]
Tracy V. Wilson
You know buying a home used to be a huge headache. You had to go to different places for listings, pre approval financing. But Rocket is putting everything you need in one place. Rocket.com, a single seamless homeownership platform to help you find, buy, sell, finance, even refinance your home. Everything you need all under one roof. Every home at one address. Rocket.com the new home for all things homeownership Rock Rocket Own the dream Breaking.
- [00:30]
Holly Fry
News T Mobile Network outperforms expectations in all sectors because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are On America's largest 5G network Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off at the $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of via virtual prepaid card last 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service port in 90 days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required card is no cash access and expires in six months.
- [00:59]
Narrator
Time for a Sofa Upgrade Introducing anibe sofas where designer style meets budget friendly prices. Anime brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly. Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anabe is the only machine washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain resistant fabrics that make clean cleaning easy. Liquids simply slide right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high resilience foam lets you choose between a sink in feel or a supportive memory foam blend. Plus our pet friendly stain resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your living space. Today sofas start at just $699 with no risk returns and a 30 day money back guarantee. Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washablesofas.com offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
- [02:01]
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [02:11]
Tracy V. Wilson
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
- [02:15]
Narrator
And I'm Holly Fry.
- [02:17]
Tracy V. Wilson
This is part two of our Unearthed episodes. For the first few months of 2025, this is where we talk about things that have been literally and figuratively unearthed over the last few months. As we so often do, we're starting with things that are just kind of a mix of topics which I call the Potpourri because I used to watch a lot of Jeopardy.
- [02:39]
Narrator
Our Potpourri this time around is going to kick off with a lengthier discussion of what seemed like one of the biggest news stories of the quarter, at least in Unearthed. And that's the identity of Jack the Ripper. This is kind of like the Voynich manuscript where it comes up every couple of years where someone has cracked things.
- [03:02]
Tracy V. Wilson
For a long time. It felt almost annual. Voynich manuscript yeah.
- [03:06]
Narrator
There was a lot of chatter about Jack the Ripper on social media and people asked if we had seen that Jack the Ripper had been identified as Aaron Kaminsky, a 23 year old Polish man who worked in Whitechapel where those famous murders happened. Police files from the time named Kaminsky as a suspect. But it's not 100% clear whether Aaron Kaminsky is the Kaminsky those police files were talking about.
- [03:33]
Tracy V. Wilson
So this conclusion of him as the perpetrator came from DNA research on a shawl that was claimed to have been found next to the body of Catherine Eddowes when she was killed in 1888. There are some question marks here too. There is not really a clear chain of custody for this shawl and police reports don't mention a shawl among Eddowes belongings. So that's why a lot of the times when people reference to this shawl, they describe it as being, quote, claimed to have been found near the body. Even if this really was a shawl that belonged to Catherine Eddowes, a lot of people would have handled it between 1888 and now, especially in the years prior to the understanding of DNA and other things as evidence that could be left on an object. That raises a lot of questions about who all's DNA might be on there.
- [04:27]
Narrator
Researchers compared mitochondrial DNA from this shawl to that of living people related to both Catherine Eddowes and Aaron Kaminsky, and said that the results do suggest a connection. It's also likely that some of the DNA came from someone with brown hair and brown eyes. That matches up with eyewitness statements from the time of the murders. This research was published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, which is peer reviewed. And a lot of the recent chatter about this has made it sound as though it is 100% conclusive.
- [05:02]
Tracy V. Wilson
However, there are all of those question marks that we already mentioned. And to add to that, a number of experts have weighed in with questions about the DNA research itself. Like some have said that mitochondrial DNA can only be used to rule someone out as a relative, not to conclusively confirm a connection. The researchers who did this work also didn't publish their data in detail. So it is impossible for others to independently confirm their interpretations of that data. A lot of people have brown hair and brown eyes.
- [05:39]
Narrator
I did it. I somehow have traveled through time and I'm a monster. To add another layer to this, these latest headlines seem to trace back to an appearance by Russell Edwards, who acquired that shawl in 2007 and gave it to a biochemist for testing. And those tests were part of Edwards's book Naming Jack the Ripper, which came out in 2014. One of the criticisms of the book at that time was that there was very little detail about the actual research. The article later published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences does have more detail, but it's still not complete. And the Journal published additional letters to the editor criticizing it in the following months. Today the journal article is accompanied by an expression of concern that references the letters to the editor and the original author's responses and says this quote. During the investigation, the publisher and editor in chief made every effort to obtain from the authors the original raw data from the MTDNA analysis. However, the author stated that the data were no longer available due to instrument data failure and other complications. Through further investigation, it was concluded that because it was not possible to examine the original data, no determination could be made regarding the third party complaints.
- [07:04]
Tracy V. Wilson
So this journal article came out in 2019. It does not appear that any new research has been done in the years since then. So it just seems like this latest round of headlines grew out of an interview that Russell Edwards did with Today Australia in which he called for a new inquest into the murders and not from any actual new developments in the case. There was just a lot of headline action about Jack the Ripper case solved. But like the nothing new happened here that I can tell.
- [07:38]
Narrator
Jack the Ripper read the Voynich manuscript.
- [07:42]
Tracy V. Wilson
And I don't know, I did not. So I had like gone and I tracked down the journal article and I just bookmarked it to come back to later. And I didn't realize that the journal article was from 2019 until I was putting it in the source list for the episode and went, wait, 2019, what is happening.
- [08:02]
Narrator
Next? Staff at the Barringer Crawford Museum in Kentucky were going through their collections in preparations for the museum's 75th anniversary celebration. And they found an 80 year old Japanese hand grenade. Since they weren't sure whether this was live or not, they contacted law enforcement and the bomb squad determined that it was inactive and safe. It is a type 97 grenade which when live is filled with TNT and it Weighs about a pound.
- [08:33]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science concludes that the ancient peoples of the Philippines and island Southeast Asia may have developed advanced seafaring technologies as far back as 40,000 years ago. That's actually prior to the development of Polynesian wayfinding. This has involved work at archaeological sites that have unearthed tools that were probably used to make ropes, nets, and bindings. All of these would have been used in both boat building and in making fishing nets. But then the natural materials used to make the boats and the nets probably would not have survived those 40,000 years in the island's environment. There's also some archaeological evidence of deep sea fishing, including hooks and weights, which can only be done with a sophisticated enough boat. This kind of upends assumptions that the peoples of the Philippines and these parts of Southeast Asia did not have, like, advanced boating technologies.
- [09:35]
Narrator
And our last bit of potpourri. Archaeologists outside of Gloucester, England, have found what's been described as a Roman era service station. That is a Roman mutatio, or horse changing station, where people could rest, refresh themselves, and care for or change out their horses. They have found horse bones, bridles, and hippa sandals, which were essentially Roman horseshoes, along with lots of coins, jewelry, and the remains of ovens. It's been pointed out that this find is kind of ironic since it's a roadside resting point for travelers being unearthed in advance of road construction.
- [10:14]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, it's part of me is like, that is ironic, and part of me is like a lot of times roads are where people needed them to be. So having another road later maybe makes a lot of sense. Next, we've got a few things that were discovered through some combination of drone imaging, radar, and lidar. First, unmanned aerial vehicle scans have revealed what's being described as a mega fortress in the Caucasus Mountains. There had been previous physical work at the site, including some that was scheduled at a time of the year when the grass died back so that it would be easier to visualize. But it seemed like it was just too big to get a sense of it from the ground. So this Drone took almost 11,000 pictures, which were then used to create a high resolution map of the whole site with software that created an elevation map from those different reference points in the pictures. It turns out that this site is about 40 times bigger than what it was originally thought was. When they thought, this is so big, we need to look at it from the air. These kinds of fortress settlements were built in the area around 1500 to 500 BCE.
- [11:26]
Narrator
Next, researchers in Mexico have used LiDAR scans to map a 15th century city built by the indigenous Zapotec people at a site that was believed to be only a soldier's garrison. This city included more than 1,000 structures and 2.5 miles of walls. Researcher Pedro Guillermo Ramoncelis described the city as very well preserved. It's believed that the people who were living there relocated to another city shortly before the Spanish arrived in the area.
- [11:58]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, in Peru, researchers have used acoustic prospecting and ground penetrating radar to find secret tunnels known as Chincana under the city of Cusco. It's not really known what purpose these tunnel networks served, but they were built by the Inca and they likely connected two Inca monuments in the city. Those were a fortress and the Temple of the Sun.
- [12:23]
Narrator
And lastly, researchers at Sforza Castle in Milan, Italy, have used ground penetrating radar to find numerous passages, some of which may have been built by the military for secret purposes. Some of these passages are referenced in historical documents and shown in sketches done by Leonardo da Vinci. But in addition to confirming these already documented passageways, these scans reveal additional passages that were previously unknown.
- [12:52]
Tracy V. Wilson
Let's take a little sponsor break and then we'll come back with some books and letters. All you renters out there hear something from Rocket Mortgage you're going to want to hear now. Anyone who's ever rented before knows that feeling you get every month. Your hard earned cash gone. It's like throwing money away. Even more frustrating is the knowledge that every dollar you spent on rent is a dollar you could have put toward your future. And it can make it feel like you'll never be able to save enough to afford a home of your own. And that's what makes what Rocket Mortgage is doing here so special. They're helping you put your monthly rent payments towards home ownership. It's called rent Rewards and for the first time, you can save up to $5,000 off of your home just by paying rent. Only at Rocket Mortgage. If this sounds like something that could make a difference in your life, call 804Rocket or visit Rocket.com today to learn more about rent rewards. That's 804Rocket or Rocket.com Rocket Mortgage LLC. Licensed in all 50 states. Nmlsconsumeraccess.org 3030.
- [14:03]
Narrator
Time for a sofa Upgrade Introducing Anabe sofas where designer style meets budget friendly prices. Anabe brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly. Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibe is the only machine washable sofa inside and out Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy. Liquids simply slide right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high resilience foam lets you choose between a sink in feel or a supportive memory foam blend. Plus our pet friendly stain resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your living space. Today sofas start at just $699 with no risk returns and a 30 day money back guarantee. Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washablesofas.com offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
- [15:04]
Holly Fry
Breaking News T Mobile Network outperforms expectations in all sectors because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network. Switch now. Keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off at the $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com Keep and switch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Last 15 days qualify and unlock device credit service port in 90 plus days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption Required card is no cash access. It expires in six months.
- [15:40]
Tracy V. Wilson
We are picking back up with some books and letters. First, a man cleaning out his father's attic found a ton of papers related to Winnie the Pooh. The attic belonged to Leslie Smith, who had worked in publishing, and these papers included a lot of correspondence about the Winnie the Pooh books, including original manuscripts and corrected proofs of Now We Are six and the house at Pooh Corner. There was also some correspondence among the papers with other British authors including Enid Blyton and J.R.R. tolkien. These materials were ultimately split up to be sold at auction. This really overshadows the Winnie the Pooh find we had on Unearthed a couple of years back. That was just one sketch wrapped in a tea towel, right?
- [16:30]
Narrator
We have talked on the show about historical book binders recycling materials from old books when binding new ones, and that has led to some interesting historical finds over the years. It can be difficult to impossible to study these earlier materials without destroying the books that they became part of, but researchers at Leiden University have published work on one potential way to do it with an endoscopic camera, adapting a technique that was originally developed to examine the insides of gun barrels. In particular, they used the camera in the spines of 16th and 17th century books that had been reinforced with strips of medieval manuscripts. They've also published A brief video on YouTube of what the camera sees as it travels down the inside of the book's spine. They've titled their paper fragmentoscopy An Innovative way to Discover hidden heritage inside Early Modern book bindings.
- [17:29]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, archaeologists in France have found a line of 60 burials, 21 of which were found to contain lead curse tablets. All of these appear to be men's graves dating back to the Roman era. But beyond that, it is not really clear who they were or why they. Why these curse tablets were involved. These curses were written on very thin sheets of lead, and the one whose inscription has been examined so far was written in the extinct Celtic language of Galish.
- [18:05]
Narrator
I really like the idea of curse tablets. I want to bring those back. Researchers in Iraq have found clay tablets containing containing cuneiform writing at the Mesopotamian site of Kurd Kabirstan. The tablets are the first of their kind in the area and they're still being interpreted. But it's hoped that they will shed more light on the people who were living there, as well as the city's connections to other parts of Mesopotamia. Other finds at the site include game boards and part of a structure.
- [18:34]
Tracy V. Wilson
Researchers have pieced together the oldest known runestone in Norway after determining that stones that were found in multiple grave sites were all fragments that fit together. That breaking and distribution of the stone probably being something that was done intentionally. Since these were found in burial sites, it was possible to use other materials that was buried along with them to more conclusively date them. According to radiocarbon dating, this was made sometime between 50 BCE and 275 cell CE.
- [19:09]
Narrator
While the fragments fit together, the engravings on them aren't continuous. There are clear sequences of runes, but also other markings that are a bit more ambiguous. So it's possible that the inscriptions were created by different people.
- [19:25]
Tracy V. Wilson
Speaking of oldest, archaeologists in Spain have discovered what may be the earliest example of alphabetic writing in northern Iberia dating back to the Iron Age. This was found on a spindle whorl that was found back in 2017. But more recent analysis was what identified an inscription from the Celtiberian Alphabet. This may have been a property mark or an identity mark. Celtiberian, as that name suggests, was a continental Celtic language that's now extinct. And the inscribed letter resembles a capital.
- [20:00]
Narrator
Letter V. We have another message in a bottle this time around on unearthed. And this one was found at Edinburgh's King's Theater. It was behind molding in the theater's proscenium. A theater patron and donor found it during a tour of the building while renovation work is underway. He basically just stuck his hand up there and felt around. This bottle was sealed with wax, but conservators at Scottish Conservation Studio opened it. They found a note From October of 1906 listing people involved with the building of the theater, including the builder, architects, draftsmen, plasterers and foremen.
- [20:39]
Tracy V. Wilson
The theater has gotten in touch with a genealogy service to look for descendants of the people that are listed on that note and are hoping that work will be done ahead of the theater's reopening next year.
- [20:52]
Narrator
A researcher from Oxford University found a manuscript copy of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 in a collection of 17th century poetry belonging to Elias Ashmole. Sonnet 116 is the one that starts Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends when the remover to remove. It's one of Shakespeare's more widely known sonnets today, but it doesn't seem to have been particularly popular closer to his lifetime. There's only one other manuscript copy of this sonnet that has ever been found before.
- [21:31]
Tracy V. Wilson
It's also not exactly the same as the Sonnet 116 that people would probably recognize today. It is a song adaptation by Henry Laws that includes six additional lines. It was included in a miscellany that is a handwritten manuscript with texts by different authors included, and it was included alongside political writings. So in that context it's being interpreted as about political constancy rather than a constancy of romantic love. Ashmole was a royalist, and this miscellany dates back to around the time of the English Civil Wars.
- [22:10]
Narrator
Research published in the journal Humanities and Social Science Communications has tried to quantify how many medieval manuscripts were copied by female scribes. The idea that some of the scribes who copied these manuscripts were women is not a new one. On our last installment of Unearthed, for example, we talked about illuminated manuscripts created by the Poor Clares of Cologne, which they were known for. But this research tries to figure out just how many of these medieval texts were created by women.
- [22:42]
Tracy V. Wilson
This research focused on the colophons, or short statements about the author, that are included in a lot of manuscripts, and it used as a reference a Benedictine colophon catalog. That catalog includes 23,774 colophons, and 254 of them, or 1.1%, seem to have been written by women. Extrapolated out to the total number of known illuminated manuscripts that means at least 110,000 of them were created by women.
- [23:18]
Narrator
But this research suggests that this is likely a low estimate for women's contributions to medieval illuminated manuscripts. Not all manuscripts have a colophon, and women may have been less likely to sign their work due to social and religious expectations. It's also possible that works by women were more intentionally targeted during events like the Protestant Reformation, meaning we have few of them surviving today. Researchers also noted that the number of manuscripts by women escalated after about the year 1400, before dropping off again with advances in printing in Europe.
- [23:57]
Tracy V. Wilson
And the last thing we're filing under books and letters is a map, possibly the world's oldest three dimensional map. This was found in a rock shelter in France carved into Sandstone about 13,000 years ago. And it shows the waterways and geomorphological features of the Ecole river valley. It seems almost like an instruction manual for how to direct rainwater along specific paths in the valley. This is about 3,000 years older than the previous oldest known three dimensional map.
- [24:33]
Narrator
And now we are moving on to animal finds. According to research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, birds living near medieval towns like Oxford, Winchester and Northampton relied extensively on human food. This lines up with historical accounts that describe some birds, including red kites stealing food from market stalls and even from people's hands. This research involved chemical analysis of the bones of 11 red kites, 18 common buzzards and three white tailed eagles, which suggested that some of them were living entirely on people's scraps, rather than by hunting live prey or scavenging the carcasses of wild animals. This means that the birds adapted to coexisting with people and that they served a role in the ecosystem of these cities.
- [25:24]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, researchers have found evidence suggesting that herders on the Iberian Peninsula were strategically managing their cattle as far 6,000 years ago. This included seasonally moving them between pastures in the mountains and the lowlands, and also modifying their reproductive cycles so that calves would only be born in the summer, when there was plenty of fresh pasture land available.
- [25:51]
Narrator
This came from research into animal remains in Pixerelle's Cave, which has been inhabited by people and animals going back to Neolithic times. About 80% of the animal remains there are from domestic cattle, which is unique on the peninsula.
- [26:08]
Tracy V. Wilson
And lastly, across Eastern Europe, There are about 70 known mammoth bone circles that date back about 25,000 years. We don't really know what these bone circles were for, but one of the biggest ones is in Russia, about 300 miles south of Moscow. It's called Kostenki 11 it's about 40ft wide, and it includes the bones of at least 60 mammoths, totaling nearly 3,000 bones.
- [26:38]
Narrator
Research published in the journal Quaternary Environments and Humans has examined these bones and drawn some conclusions, although without really clearing up why our ancient ancestors were doing this. Obviously, these didn't all come from the same mammoth, but this research suggests that they also came from from completely different herds that were not related to one another. They studied bones from 30 different animals, 17 females and 13 males. Some of the bones were hundreds of years older than the rest, suggesting that people may have used bones from freshly hunted mammoths, as well as bones scavenged from much older kills or from bone beds where people discarded mammoth bones after processing the carcasses.
- [27:24]
Tracy V. Wilson
Now we're going to take another quick sponsor break. All you renters out there hear something from Rocket Mortgage you're going to want to hear now. Anyone who's ever rented before knows that feeling you get every month. Your hard earned cash gone. It's like throwing money away. Even more frustrating is the knowledge that every dollar you spent on rent is a dollar you could have put toward your future. And it can make it feel like you'll never be able to save enough to afford a home of. And that's what makes what Rocket Mortgage is doing here so special. They're helping you put your monthly rent payments towards home ownership. It's called Rent Rewards and for the first time you can save up to $5,000 off the cost of your home just by paying rent. Only at Rocket Mortgage. If this sounds like something that could make a difference in your life, call 804Rocket or visit Rocket.com today to learn more about rent rewards. That's 800 for Rocket or Rocket.com Rocket Mortgage LLC. Licensed in all 50 states in mlsconsumeraccess.org number 3030.
- [28:34]
Narrator
Time for a sofa Upgrade Introducing Anibe sofas where designer style meets budget friendly prices. Anibe brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly. Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anabe is the only machine washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy liquids simply slide right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high resilience foam lets you choose between a sink in feel or a supportive memory foam blend. Plus our pet friendly stain resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your living space Today sofas start at just $699 with no risk returns and a 30 day money back guarantee. Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washablesofas.com offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
- [29:35]
Holly Fry
Breaking News T Mobile Network outperforms expectations in all sectors because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network. Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com KeepAndSwitch up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualified unlock device, credit service report in 90 days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card is no cash access and expires in six months.
- [30:11]
Tracy V. Wilson
Now moving on to Edibles and potables Archaeologists in China have been exploring the ways people used bone powder in cuisine roughly 8,000 years ago. This came from examination of pottery vessels and food crust remains from an archaeological site that was excavated in 2017 and 2018. The researchers had initially been focused on studying alcohol making, but they wound up finding residue in the crusts that aligned with the composition of bone. They eventually concluded that the bone was ground up and cooked together with wild plants like acorns. They speculated that this was part of this society's transition from hunting and gathering to farming to try to get more nutrients out of kind of a limited amount of food available to them. It's also possible that people living in this area produced bone grease by boiling crushed bones for several hours and then skimming the resulting grease off the top. Cooking with this grease could then help extract nutrients from hard to digest foods.
- [31:18]
Narrator
Researchers in Australia have found evidence of dried plants under the floors of the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney. This was built in the 19th century and it served a number of roles in colonial Australia. It started as a barracks for people who had been transported to Australia after being convicted of a crime. Then it housed the Female Immigration Depot for unmarried women who were immigrating to Australia, and then the Female Destitute Asylum, which was a home for women who were elderly, ill or disabled.
- [31:52]
Tracy V. Wilson
They found a variety of foods under the floors, including fruits and vegetables, nuts and salt spices. Some of these plant foods were native to Australia and others were imports, and a lot of what they found was much too big to have just fallen through the floorboards as people were eating. So that suggests that people were placing their food under the floors Intentionally. Some of the foods don't appear in inventories of the institution's food stores or in other official records. So this suggests that people were smuggling in food from outside, especially during the barracks time, housing women. Records detail a diet that would have been really monotonous, so mostly bread and a soup made of boiled meat and vegetables. So these smuggled and hidden foods probably would have been kind of an illicit treat.
- [32:42]
Narrator
Archaeologists in China have examined a small amount of liquid from inside a bronze vessel shaped like an owl, and they found a 3,000-year-old distilled spirit. The lid of the vessel had rusted shut, sealing it off from the air and preserving what was left inside. The vessel had been found in 2010, but it wasn't until last year that the Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism approved a conservation and protection plan for the artifacts from this site, which is why it wasn't opened and studied before. Now, this spirit and the owl vessel it was contained in were probably part of a funerary offering. And this discovery fills a gap in the timeline of what was known about distilling in ancient China.
- [33:29]
Tracy V. Wilson
Another early alcohol was found in Brazil based on analysis of pottery dating back to between 2300 and 1200 years ago. That's the oldest known alcohol in the region. These were fermented, not distilled, and were made from vegetables such as tubers, sweet corn, and palm.
- [33:48]
Narrator
Sharing these beverages was probably a communal event for the people known as the Cerritos Mound Builders, who were the ancestors of later indigenous groups, including the Charua and Minuano. They were probably served alongside fish dishes. Some of the pottery fragments had residues connected to fish processing.
- [34:08]
Tracy V. Wilson
Last year, officials announced the discovery of a food cache at an archaeological site at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Alaska. Was about 3 1/2ft deep and lined with birch bark. That birch bark lining was intact, which is really rare for caches like these, especially in an area where a lot of the landscape was torn up and destroyed while the base was being built.
- [34:33]
Narrator
The team expected any food remains inside the cache to be about 200 years old, but radiocarbon dating suggests that it's much older than that, almost 1,000 years old. Meat residues in the soil samples seem to come from moose and caribou, but it's not yet fully clear whether that's because meat was stored in the cache or because those animals live in the area. Further study is planned to figure that part out.
- [34:59]
Tracy V. Wilson
Researchers collaborated with elders and knowledge holders from Dena and Ahtna tribes to contextualize this find. And they learned that a birch tree in this area had been marked with what looks like the letter T, possibly referencing the name of a family that later maintained a fish camp in this.
- [35:18]
Narrator
Area and our last food and beverage find. Archaeologists at the ancient city of Hadrianopolis in Turkey have found a bronze filter that probably would have been used at the end of a plant based drinking straw. The filter is about three and a half inches long, and it's shaped like a cone with holes all along the sides that would have allowed people to drink things like beer and fruit juice without sucking up the grains or pulp that would have been floating in there. This filter is about 1600 years old.
- [35:50]
Tracy V. Wilson
Moving on to shipwrecks, but really comparatively fewer shipwrecks than we have had. In some of our most recent installments. Maritime archaeologists have investigated what may be the oldest known carvel built vessel from the Nordic region. These are wooden boats that are constructed by fixing the planks to a frame with the edges of those planks lined up against each other. This is sturdier and allows for larger vessels than clinker construction, which is when the edges of the planks overlap. But it requires more caulking to keep the vessel watertight. This wreck was found south of Stockholm, and preliminary evidence suggests that it was built in the 1480s, although it's possible that it was built maybe 20 years earlier, but then was repaired around 1480. Either way, that would be very early in the shift away from clinker construction in the area. Researchers working with this vessel are hoping to get funding for a more thorough excavation of this wreck.
- [36:53]
Narrator
Next. The Brazilian navy has confirmed the location of the Vitalda Oliveira, which was torpedoed by a German u boat on June 19, 1944, as it was transporting supplies along the coast off Rio de Janeiro. About 100 of the 270 crew on board died when the ship sank. Brazil was the only country in South America to send troops to fight on the side of the Allies, which had led Germany to retaliate against Brazilian ships. The sunken World War II ship was the only Brazilian ship to sink due to enemy activity during the war.
- [37:29]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, there were ships that sank for other reasons, but this was the only one sunk by an enemy. This wreck was first reported 14 years ago when some divers spotted it while they were trying to free a stuck fishing net. But it wasn't conclusively identified until it was studied with various sonar technologies. In an interesting coincidence, the research vessel used to make this identification was named the Vital de Oliveira in honor of that sunken Ship Researchers in Lake Superior.
- [37:59]
Narrator
Have found the wreck of the Western Reserve, which was one of the first all steel cargo ships in the Great Lakes. The ship was believed to be very safe and it was known for its speed and was nicknamed the Inland Greyhound by the local press. It sank in a storm in August 1892 when its owner, Peter Minch had taken his family out for a ride on the ship. It wasn't carrying any cargo and that meant that without that weight to hold it down, it was really thrown around in the storm. It's possible that its steel hull had become brittle in the cold water. It broke in half and only one of the 28 people aboard survived.
- [38:39]
Tracy V. Wilson
The Western Reserve was found after a two year search and was initially spotted using side scanning sonar, then confirmed through photography from a submersible drone.
- [38:51]
Narrator
Now we've got a few sword finds. First, archaeologists studying burial sites in southeastern England have found an intricately decorated sword among the grave goods. It has a silver and gold plated hilt with a runic script along its blade. These burial sites date back to the 5th and 6th centuries CE and the sword is exceptionally well preserved. Study of this sword and its runes is still ongoing.
- [39:19]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, metal detectorists in Poland who were looking for artifacts from World War II wound up finding a three foot long Roman era sword dating back to the third or fourth century CE. It had been broken in three places, probably intentionally, and it also seems to have been burned, meaning that it may have been used in some kind of funeral ritual. And this suggests some sort of cross cultural influence since the sword was Roman. But this funeral practice is associated with the Seroworsk culture.
- [39:53]
Narrator
Different metal detectorists, apparently also looking for World War II era artifacts, found a different sword in Poland, this one dating to the late Middle Ages. This one's also about three feet long and its tip is broken off, probably not intentionally. It was discovered alongside two axe heads from around the same period. Those axe heads were also in good condition.
- [40:18]
Tracy V. Wilson
It seems like using metal detectors to look for World War II era artifacts might be some kind of a pastime in Poland. Maybe listeners from Poland can write in and fill us in on this, because our last find is also from somebody who was doing that. And the people involved in these three finds have been members of three different organizations all dedicated to this. This last one is not a sword though. It is sword adjacent. It is a bronze scabbard fitting dating back about a thousand years. That scabbard fitting is called a shoe and it goes at the tip of the scabbard to protect it from damage.
- [40:57]
Narrator
And lastly for this installment of Unearthed, one discovery of cats, specifically that domesticated cats arrived in China about 1400 years ago, probably having been carried along the Silk Road. Although it was long believed that cats were first domesticated in Egypt, more recent genetic research suggests this took place in ancient Anatolia around what's now Turkey, roughly 10,000 years ago. Domesticated cats were widespread in Europe by about the 4th century CE. So this suggests that domesticated cats were introduced in China hundreds of years after their introduction in Europe.
- [41:37]
Tracy V. Wilson
According to archaeological evidence, the first domestic cats in China were seen as highly prized exotic animals, and they mostly belonged to the elite and the wealthy. The 14 domesticated cats whose bones were part of this study also all shared some commonalities in their mitochondrial DNA. That's not common in cats that are from Europe or western Asia. People in more rural areas did live alongside other cats, though, specifically a small wild cat called the leopard cat, which is native to China. Kitties yes, that is how we're ending off today's Unearthed. Aside from also having some listener mail, this is from Nancy. Nancy wrote in and said hi Holly and Tracy. I just listened to the episode in the archives on Scott Joplin from April 10, 2023. I'm a little older than the two of you, but as you mentioned in the behind the scenes discussion, I also was introduced to Scott Joplin's music and ragtime as a musical genre via the movie the sting in the 1970s. I believe I played the record album so much that I wore out the grooves. I'm gonna pause this email for a second and say I don't remember if I said it in that episode, but the Sting on vinyl is one of the two first records that I ever owned. Returning to the email Much to my delight today I saw a feed in one of my social media streams that brought a smile to my face. The Washington National Opera will be staging Scott Joplin's forgotten opera Tree Manisha next year at the Kennedy center on March 12th through 22nd, 2026. I am opening the link to this to make sure that it's still on the Kennedy center website and it is currently ticket purchase is only open for series subscriptions multiple show packages, but I will be following and will be purchasing a ticket as soon as individual ticket sales open up. I know neither of you are based near Washington D.C. but this looks like a unique opportunity, especially if you like oper. I know you both have very busy schedules and would have a ton of things to do and see in this area if you visited. It's hard to say, but these March dates next year might even be during cherry blossom season, especially the dates later in the month. I must admit I love when the cherry trees are blooming and it is spectacular on the National Mall, around the Tidal Basin when all the trees are in bloom. The smell is heavenly. Instead of pet tax, I'm attaching a couple of pictures of cherry blossoms from a previous year to entice you to come to dc. Love what you do. Keep up the good work. I have learned so much from Stuff you missed in History Class podcast. Thanks Nancy. Thank you so much Nancy. And thank you for these beautiful cherry tree pictures. I do love to look at the cherry trees and to smell the cherry trees. Back when we were part of Discovery, Discovery's headquarters were in Silver Spring, Maryland and so I was in Washington D.C. regularly. And yet I don't think any of my many work trips to Washington D.C. were during cherry blossom season.
- [45:03]
Narrator
That was probably purposeful, right? Nobody was scheduling anything then because it's such a busy travel tourist time.
- [45:10]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, it would have been harder to get cheap and flights and things probably so thank you so much Nancy. We'll see what happens between now and next year. Regarding maybe going to see Tree Manisha because that would be really cool. If you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're@history podcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to our 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.
- [46:00]
Narrator
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