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- [00:00]
Tracy V. Wilson
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:05]
Tide Commercial Voice
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- [00:17]
Holly Fry
Sure thing.
- [00:18]
Tide Commercial Voice
Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be tied.
- [00:34]
Holly Fry
Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio.
- [00:45]
Tracy V. Wilson
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
- [00:49]
Holly Fry
And I'm Holly Fry.
- [00:50]
Tracy V. Wilson
This is part two of what was unearthed in the fourth quarter of 2025. It is now January of 2026, which is how this thing usually goes. We are going to kick this off as we typically do with all the stuff I just thought was cool, but it doesn't really fit into a category. I always call that the potpourri. I feel like we have more potpourri than usual this time. Great.
- [01:16]
Holly Fry
We put it in a basket, put it in the bathroom.
- [01:18]
Tracy V. Wilson
It'll smell nice for everyone.
- [01:22]
Holly Fry
In October, the remnants of Typhoon halong did catastrophic damage in western Alaska and this included massive flooding with houses and infrastructure being completely washed away. Many of the most affected communities were Alaska Native communities in low lying areas along the coast that were already being negatively affected by climate change, including worsening cycles of freezing, thawing and erosion. At least one person died as of mid December, when Tracie was putting this episode together, hundreds of people were still displaced from their homes and it is likely that they may not be able to return for more than a year.
- [02:01]
Tracy V. Wilson
The community of Quinhawk, which is on the Kuskokwim Bay, did not face these levels of destruction in terms of things like homes and roads and other infrastructure. But this area used to be permafrost, and in recent years that permafrost has started to thaw. So the storm was able to just strip away a lot of the village's shoreline, and that included damaging an archaeological site that had been undergoing excavation and that instantly exposed thousands and thousands of artifacts, maybe even as many as 100,000.
- [02:39]
Holly Fry
The area's Yup' ik residents had already been collaborating with archaeologists to survey and preserve artifacts, and at this site after the storm, volunteers and archaeologists started a rescue archaeology project to try to save as many objects as possible before the temperatures started to dip below freezing. They were working with experts to retrieve exposed items, soak them in fresh water and treat them so they do not shatter as they dry out. After centuries of being buried, this project is expected to resume with warmer weather in the spring.
- [03:13]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, this is something that has been described in local reporting with words like bittersweet, like the whole community coming together to really work on this, but also a tragic thing to have to do because so many things were just exposed by this storm. Moving on Olauda Equiano, author of the Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olauda Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, an African American, has been on my list for a while for an episode In November, the Guardian reported that the burial site of his daughter Anna Maria Vassa had been located thanks to an A level students paper that had been written all the way back in 1977. This paper was found during research into a signed Equiano letter that was done in 2021. The students who wrote the 1977 paper had found and photographed a likely burial plot in a churchyard.
- [04:15]
Holly Fry
In October, researchers visited the location and determined that the student paper was correct. Anna Maria Vasa, who died at the age of three, was buried at St Andrew's Church in Cambridge. There is also an epitaph on the church's north wall written by abolitionist Edward Eind, who was a friend of of Oluda Equiano at the time of Anna Maria's death.
- [04:38]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, back in 2024, a hiker in Norway found a bunch of wooden logs and branches that seemed to have been arranged almost like fences. This find was at an elevation of about 4,600ft and in an area that had previously been covered in ice. He reported this find to the authorities and a team from the University Museum of Bergen investigated. They have concluded that this arrangement of logs and branches was a reindeer trap dating back about 1500 years. Photos of it show sort of a three sided structure which is now collapsed, which would have acted both as a hunting blind for the hunters and as an obstacle to corral the reindeer and make it easier for the hunters to hit them with their spears. Authorities also found iron spearheads, arrows and bows along with the antlers of about a hundred reindeer in the area.
- [05:40]
Holly Fry
For another surprise find, a man digging for worms near his home in Stockholm, Sweden, found a huge hoard of coins, beads and rings buried in the remains of a deteriorated copper vessel. This find totaled more than 20,000 items. Authorities were again notified and investigators found that most of these objects date back to the 12th century during the reign of Newt Erikson. This is one of the largest silver hoards from this period to be found in Sweden.
- [06:12]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, teams working at a site in Australia known as Windmill Way have found extremely rare examples of Aboriginal stringcraft. It is likely that 90% or more of the artifacts that Aboriginal peoples in Australia were using in daily life centuries ago were made of plant and animal materials, and those are just not as likely to survive in the archaeological record. But the oldest of these stringwork samples date back about 1700 years. There are also some more durable specimens at the site, like charcoal from campfires, and some of those are even older than that.
- [06:57]
Holly Fry
These string craft examples are in fragments, but many of them can still be identified as coming from specific items. Some are parts of dilly bags. That's something that's comparable to a backpack. Others probably came from fishing nets. And some pieces were parts of belts and necklaces.
- [07:16]
Tracy V. Wilson
A lot of these string work pieces used things like knots or loops, or they were made into a mesh or some other configuration. But the core techniques to make them stayed really consistent from the oldest pieces to the newest ones. The newest pieces date back to after contact with Europeans. So in addition to showing how these pieces were made, this find also demonstrates how the techniques we're making them were passed down through generations for centuries.
- [07:47]
Holly Fry
This work was part of a larger project studying the rock art and lifeways of the Cape York Peninsula. It's a collaborative project bringing together multiple Aboriginal corporations and traditional owners, university researchers, and technological partners.
- [08:04]
Tracy V. Wilson
Moving on. Researchers in China have used the DNA from 32 adult volunteers to explore whether today's Bo people are descendants of an ancient culture known as the hanging coffin culture, which has sometimes been called the ancient bow. Hanging coffin sites have been dated back to about 3,500 years ago, and they involved funerary rituals in which the deceased were placed into wooden coffins, and then those coffins were carried to steep hillsides and anchored into the cliff faces. This could involve scaffolding ropes, or naturally occurring or constructed ledges and trails. This practice has been documented in parts of southern and Southeast Asia. But the use of these specific cliff mounted coffins ended during the late Ming dynasty. So these sites are attributed to multiple ancient cultures, one of them being the ancient bo people.
- [09:09]
Holly Fry
Nine of the 32 volunteers had to be excluded from the study because it turned out they were related to one another too closely to meet the criteria. The DNA of the remaining volunteers was compared to 14 genome samples from hanging coffin sites in southeast China and northern Thailand.
- [09:28]
Tracy V. Wilson
This research suggests that the ancient hanging coffin practitioners were genetically similar to one another and to populations that lived along the coast of southeastern China during that same period. And also it suggests that Bo people today are descended from hanging coffin practitioners in what's now Yunnan Province. So this confirms the oral history of Bo people living today.
- [09:54]
Holly Fry
And our last bit of potpourri. Researchers from the University of Barcelona believe that 12 large shells found at Neolithic sites in Catalonia may have been used as both communication devices and musical instruments, which would make them the oldest known musical instruments in the world. These samples date back to between 5,000 and 4,000 BCE.
- [10:19]
Tracy V. Wilson
These shells came from sea snails, but they appear to have been gathered after the snails that had used them had died, meaning that they were not likely collected for use as food. Eight of the shells were intact enough to produce a sound, theoretically, so researchers got permission to try to use them that way. I think more often in the research like this that we've talked about, there have been replicas made, but this was apparently the actual shells. And the researchers found that if through the opening of the shell, it produced a clear stable tone, they could change that tone depending on how they blew into the shell and whether they put their hand into the shell's opening. They posted a video along with this press release. And in that video, this sounds kind of like a trumpet or a bugle.
- [11:10]
Holly Fry
In addition to their potential use as musical instruments, some of these shells were found in a mine. And researchers have speculated the that mine workers may have used them to communicate between one gallery and another.
- [11:24]
Tracy V. Wilson
That is all the potpourri. It took all of the first arc of this episode. So now we will take a quick break. There were a number of finds late last year that were all related to tools. So we're going to talk about tools for a little bit first. According to research published in plos one, ancient humans in Italy used small tools to butcher elephants for their meat. But then they used the elephants bones to make bigger tools. This conclusion came from research at a site dating back more than 400,000 years, which included 300 bones, other skeletal pieces from a single elephant, as well as an assortment of stone tools, most of which were 30 millimeters in size or smaller.
- [12:20]
Holly Fry
The elephant appeared to have died of some kind of natural cause rather than being hunted by humans. The bones did not have much evidence of cut marks, suggesting that small tools had been used to remove the meat from the bones. But several of the bones appeared to have been broken on site, using blunt force to extract the marrow from inside. And then some of them had been modified to make larger tools, tools than the ones used for butchering the elephant.
- [12:48]
Tracy V. Wilson
I don't know why this particular story was kind of I was like, yeah, they had tiny little tools, and then they had elephant bones. They could make much bigger ones. Next, researchers working at a Celtic settlement in Poland believe they have found a trepanation tool, or a tool used to make holes in the skull. This tool is about 2,300 years old and made of iron with a blade that transitions into a spike. It might have originally also had a wood handle, although if it did, that handle has not survived. Trepanation could be carried out for both medical and ritual purposes, and Celts in this region were known to have practiced it. Although there have not been any human remains found showing evidence of trepanation in the area where this tool was found.
- [13:39]
Holly Fry
Next, archaeologists from Griffith University on the east coast of Australia found a large hoard of stone tools that were buried near a waterhole roughly 170 years ago. They have worked with the Pirapita people, who hold native title for the area where the cache was found, to analyze and study the tools. They are stone tulas, which are affixed onto handles and used for woodworking, including making other culturally important items like boomerangs and and vessels called kulimons. This cache included about 60 of the stone tool heads.
- [14:14]
Tracy V. Wilson
It is possible that this was a supply of tool heads that had been made to trade with other communities, but it's not totally clear why they were buried near this waterhole or exactly when that happened. Attempts to date this gave an estimate of sometime between 1793 and 1913, which is kind of a long range. Europeans arrived in the area and started establishing towns and a police camp in the late 19th century. So if it was after that or around that time, it's possible that these tools were buried with the intent of retrieving them to use them for trade. But then the arrival of Europeans disrupted the region's trading patterns.
- [15:00]
Holly Fry
And lastly, researchers at Paon Cave in Gabon in central Africa have found that stone tool technology associated with the cave stayed very stable for about 5,000 years. This conclusion came from tool fragments and flakes, which were both used as tools and were a byproduct of knapping. This find suggests that people in the cave were making basic tools, using the same methods constantly over thousands of years, but not creating standardized or specialized tool types. This site also includes a lot of animal remains, many of which seem to have died naturally in the cave, while others were used for food. Many of the animals that died naturally in the cave, understandably were bats.
- [15:46]
Tracy V. Wilson
Also, over the last few months, there were a lot of finds about Neanderthals. First, DNA Retrieved from a tiny piece of Neanderthal bone suggests that some Neanderthals, at least migrated very long distances. This little piece of bone was excavated from a cave on the Crimean Peninsula, and it's between 46,000 and 44,000 years old. The DNA results suggest that this Neanderthal was most closely related to a group of Neanderthals from Siberia, more than 3,000km away. This suggests that there was a long distance migration across the Eurasian steppe at some point. It might have been during a warming period that took place either 60,000 or 120,000 years ago. Those are two different known warming periods to have happened.
- [16:44]
Holly Fry
This bone is a piece of thigh bone, and it's one of many fragmented bones found in the cave. Researchers have analyzed about 150 of these bones and found that the vast majority of belong to horses or deer, as well as some mammoth bones. These are likely the animals that the Neanderthals in the area were using for food.
- [17:05]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, we have talked about Neanderthals interbreeding with Homo sapiens on previous installments of Unearthed, and we've also talked about various explanations about how and when the Neanderthals died out. A preprint that was posted in October, meaning this is not something that had been through peer review yet, suggests a possible genetic reason for the Neanderthals dying out. And it's one that is connected to their interbreeding with Homo sapiens. This is that Neanderthals had a gene variant that gave them a trait called red blood cell oxygen affinity, which affects how oxygen interacts with hemoglobin in the blood.
- [17:50]
Holly Fry
This trait could have been beneficial for the Neanderthals, but once they started interbreeding with Homo sapiens, it could have led to a genetic incompatibility. Basically, if a Neanderthal had both Neanderthal and Homo sapien ancestry and she became pregnant with a fetus that had two copies of the Homo sapien version of the gene, then her body might not be able to provide enough oxygen for that fetus to grow. This genetic incompatibility might have made it easier for Homo sapien mothers to carry their pregnancies to terminate. And this could potentially explain why about 2% of the genome of modern humans from Europe and Asia comes from Neanderthals. But there is no Neanderthal influence in modern humans. Mitochondrial DNA which comes only from the maternal line.
- [18:38]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. This provides a hypothesis for why it appears that there were no Neanderthal women carrying babies to term and providing part of this future genetic lineage. Next Research at Neanderthal sites in Crimea and Ukraine suggests that Neanderthals used ochre for symbolic purposes, like drawing and marking things. This conclusion comes from a collection of 16 pieces of ochre that were basically used as crayons up to 70,000 years ago. Some of these ochre pieces appeared to have been intentionally shaped into a point. So this point was put there on purpose. It was not just a byproduct of the ochre being rubbed against a surface to mark it. This is not the only evidence of Neanderthals using symbols or making art. We've talked about some of them before on the show. Some other examples that people have discovered include finger flutings, the use of charcoal and other pigments, and handprints intentionally made onto surfaces, all of which date back before for the development of Homo sapiens.
- [19:44]
Holly Fry
And lastly, research published in the journal Nature suggests that Neanderthals were making controlled use of fire much, much longer ago than previously thought. Earlier research put Neanderthal fire making in what's now northern France about 50,000 years ago. But according to this research, Neanderthals in what's now England were deliberately making fires 400,000 years ago.
- [20:11]
Tracy V. Wilson
This conclusion came from research at a Paleolithic site in Suffolk, which revealed baked clay and flint hand axes that had been cracked by extreme heat. There were also pieces of iron pyrite, which can make sparks when struck against a flint, and that is not found naturally in this area, so it would have been brought from somewhere else. Geochemical tests suggest that things were burned at this same area repeatedly, and that the temperature of those fires exceeded 700 degrees Celsius, or 1,292 degrees Fahrenheit, which they said ruled out this being the result of something like natural wildfires.
- [20:53]
Holly Fry
Next up, we have just a few edibles and potables. Archaeologists in Turkey have found five loaves of bread dating back to the 7th and 8th centuries, stamped with religious imagery. These were likely used for Eucharistic rituals within the Greek Orthodox Church, either as part of communion or as blessed bread that was distributed to the congregation after services. These loaves are very heavily carbonized, and a lot of their detail is really well preserved.
- [21:23]
Tracy V. Wilson
It was surprising to me how clearly you could see these designs on the surface of the bread. Next, archaeologists in Tunisia have unearthed a Roman era olive oil processing complex, which is the second largest one ever uncovered in Tunisia. One of the facilities there has 12 oil presses, while another nearby has eight. This highlights how important olive oil production was to the area and to the Romans. There are also cisterns and a water collection basin.
- [21:57]
Holly Fry
And lastly, archaeologists in Switzerland have found an amphora full of sardine bones in fish sauce dating back to the Roman era, which is the first direct archaeological evidence that people were eating sardines in Roman Switzerland. This was found during archaeological work at a Roman site in advance of a construction project.
- [22:19]
Tracy V. Wilson
Now we will move on from edibles and potables to art, and we also have just a few art finds this time. I feel like this last three months had, like, a little smattering of a lot of different things and then a lot of updates and randomness. Researchers have identified the subject of a 19th century portrait painted by Thomas Phillips. This portrait shows a black man in a military uniform, which is not something that you see a lot in 19th century art. He's wearing a fur police, meaning he was in a cavalry regiment. And he's also holding a cymbal, meaning the musical instrument symbol, suggesting that he was a musician. These details, together with his race and his apparent age in the painting, led researchers to a man named Thomas James, who was born in Montserrat in 1789 and enslaved from birth. At some point, he made his way to England and worked as a servant before enlisting in the 18th light Dragoons and earning the Waterloo Medal for bravery during his military service. This research came about after the National Army Museum acquired this painting, and the painting has also been conserved and gone on display at the museum.
- [23:34]
Holly Fry
Researchers have evaluated cave art in southwest Texas and northern Mexico, finding that the oldest works in them were created 6,000 years ago and that the practice continued for about 4,000 years. Over that time, the style, imagery, motifs and use of color in the artwork in these caves remained very consistent. That makes these paintings one of the longest lasting artistic traditions in North America.
- [24:02]
Tracy V. Wilson
They made this determination by extracting small amounts of carbon, which probably came from an organic binder that was used to make the paint. And then they used accelerator mass spectrometry to estimate the age of that carbon.
- [24:17]
Holly Fry
And lastly, research published in the Journal of World Prehistory has looked at artwork from the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia. This includes depictions of flowers, shrubs, and other botanical elements on pottery, some of which are naturalistic and others of which are more abstract. Many of the images are all very symmetrical, and sometimes they show a progression in the number of objects, like flowers and flower petals, in a sequence of 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64. So this has connections both to art history and the history of mathematics, as the people who made this art seem to be thinking. About space sequences, patterns and geometric progression.
- [25:02]
Tracy V. Wilson
We are going to take another sponsor break and then we'll talk about some shipwrecks. Foreign. As we said before the break, it is time for shipwrecks. Researchers working in the eastern Mediterranean have investigated the cargo of three Iron Age ships at the archaeological site of Tel Dor. The cargoes of these ships date back to between the 11th and 7th centuries BCE, and they are the first Iron Age cargoes associated with this ancient city. They provide some evidence of the trading network that existed in this area thousands of years ago. So, for example, the oldest cargo dates back to the 11th century BCE and includes a collection of storage jars as well as an anchor. The jars are a style that was connected to the Phoenician coast, while the inscriptions on them suggest connections to both sides, Cyprus and Egypt. This excavation work is ongoing. Only about a quarter of the sandbar where these cargoes are located has been investigated.
- [26:16]
Holly Fry
The remains of a wooden ship have been found on Malacca island in Malaysia. This probably dates to the 13th century and is made of saga wood, which is native to the area. It's estimated to be about 50 meters to 70 meters in length, and it's been described as one of the area's most significant archaeological finds. As of October, the plan for this wreck was to conserve and preserve it and eventually to place it in one of Malacca's museums.
- [26:45]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, the only known surviving Joseon Dynasty ship has been recovered from the seabed off the coast of South Korea. This cargo ship is known as MATO4. It's about 600 years old, and it was discovered in 2015. Over the last decade, hundreds of pieces of cargo had already been brought up from the ship, including some carefully labeled cargo tags that gave the ship's origin and destination. Those were two different cities in what's now South Korea. The cargo includes 152 pieces of light blue green stoneware. And this hull that is the part that's most relevant today, is largely intact. It was reburied during earlier excavations, but then uncovered and retrieved this year. As with this shipwreck that was found in Malacca, the goal for this is for the ship to be preserved and then displayed in a museum. Although that process is expected to take about 15 years.
- [27:46]
Holly Fry
The shipwreck that probably got the most headlines at the end of last year is a pleasure barge dating back to the first century CE off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. Barges like these were described in the work of Greek geographer and historian Strabo and depicted in artwork. But this is the first one to be unearthed off the coast of Egypt. This barge was built for shallow water. It had no sails and was powered by a crew of about 20 rowers, with space in the middle for a pavilion and a decorated cabin.
- [28:19]
Tracy V. Wilson
It is possible that this ship sank in an earthquake. It was found near the remains of the temple of Isis that was known to have been destroyed in an earthquake. But this raised some questions about whether this ship was actually being used as a pleasure craft, like it is a style of barge that the Ptolemies were known to use to host extravagant feasts on board. But it's possible that it belonged to this temple and that the temple might have been using it for some kind of ceremonial purposes rather than as a, quote, pleasure barge.
- [28:53]
Holly Fry
The 107 year old shipwreck, known as the iron scow, which is lodged above Niagara Falls, shifted in the river in November, moving downstream about 10ft. This ship became stuck in the river in 1918 when it was being used for a dredging operation, and broke loose of the tugboat that was towing it back to shore. The two men who were aboard made it to safety. Although their Rescue took about 17 hours total.
- [29:22]
Tracy V. Wilson
The iron scow has shifted and moved periodically since then, including during severe weather on Halloween in 2019 and when icy weather damaged it in 2022. Experts suggest that over time, pieces of this wreck will be broken off and swept over the falls until it eventually just kind of gradually disappears. They say it's not likely for the whole wreck to be dramatically swept over all at once. Of course, having said that, now, I hope that's not what happens. Yeah. Between now and when this episode comes out, Making it immediately wrong. Yeah.
- [29:58]
Holly Fry
In the 4th century BCE, boats attacked the island of Als, off the coast of Denmark. The identity of the attackers is not known, but they were fought off. Their weapons were piled into one of their boats, which was then sunk into a bog, apparently as an offering. This boat and its contents were discovered in the bog in the 1880s and are the only example of a prehistoric plank boat to be found in Scandinavia. In December, researchers announced that they had found a fingerprint in the tar that was used to waterproof the boat.
- [30:33]
Tracy V. Wilson
Researchers have described this fingerprint as highly unusual. Fingerprints just aren't something that they see a lot in boats that are this old. The tar also has offered clues to where the boat came from. It's a waterproofing material made from pine pitch and animal fat. And there are not a lot of pine forests in Denmark, so it's possible that the pitch was a trade good or that the ship itself was made somewhere else, along the Baltic Sea, where pine forests are more common.
- [31:05]
Holly Fry
And lastly, something that might be shipwreck related. Late last year, teams working to restore rock pools on the coast of Wales started digging up boots. Hundreds and hundreds of Victorian boots. They all seem to date back to the same time period, although they are in different sizes and styles. Locals have talked about finding shoes before this, but this rock pool restoration project has found a lot of them, reportedly 200 of them in one week toward the end of December. There's speculation that this is cargo from a ship that sank after hitting an outcropping known as Tusker Rock, not far from where the shoes were found.
- [31:47]
Tracy V. Wilson
Next, we will move on to some medical stuff. Researchers have found what they believe is evidence of infantile cortical hyperostosis, also called ich, or caffeine disease, which is a rare disease that's not often seen in the archaeological record. This child was probably about 3 years old when they died, and their skeleton was found in a tomb in Turkey that dated back to the 10th to the 12th century. And there were other skeletal remains in this tomb as well.
- [32:17]
Holly Fry
This conclusion involved ruling out multiple other possible causes of unusual features in the skeleton, including parts of the bones that were swollen or thickened, and a discrepancy between age estimates coming from the child's teeth and long bones. The long bones appear to be those of a child between the ages of 18 months and 2 years, while the teeth seem to come from a 2 and a half or 3 and a half year old.
- [32:44]
Tracy V. Wilson
Ich usually develops around 5 months of age, although it can develop earlier, including in utero, and and then it typically resolves around the age of three. This is apparently about the age that this child died, and the child's skeleton shows some signs of recovery before their death at about 3.
- [33:06]
Holly Fry
Next, researchers at the Institut Pasteur have found evidence of two different diseases in the remains of soldiers from Napoleon's army who were part of the retreat from Russia in 1812. They extracted material from the teeth of 13 soldiers, and genetic analysis identified two Salmonella enterica, which causes paratyphoid fever, and Borrelia recurrentis, which causes relapsing fever, both of which line up with historical accounts describing illnesses among the soldiers. The two diseases have somewhat overlapping symptoms, including fevers, fatigue, and gastrointestinal distress. Previous studies have also identified two other pathogens among Napoleon's retreating army, Rickettsia prawesecchi, which causes epidemic typhus, and Bartonella quintana, which causes trench fever.
- [34:00]
Tracy V. Wilson
The first evidence of plague DNA in Edinburgh has been unearthed in the skeleton of a teenager who died in the 14th century. He was buried in Edinburgh's St Giles Cathedral, and researchers had not expected him to have plague because he was buried on his own in an individual grave rather than in one of the mass graves that was used for plague victims. Two known plague outbreaks took place in Edinburgh around the time he died. Plague DNA has not been identified in Edinburgh's archaeological record before now, in part because the use of DNA research to make these kinds of determinations is still relatively new and has not been done as much in these particular sites and.
- [34:48]
Holly Fry
In other plague news. Research published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment in December suggests that a volcanic eruption in 1345 may have set the stage for the spread of bubonic plague in Europe. The idea is that the debris from the eruption blocked the sun, which lowered temperatures across much of the Mediterranean, which caused crop failures and famine, which led cities in Italy to import grain, and rats and fleas infected with Yersenia pestis came along with that grain.
- [35:21]
Tracy V. Wilson
This volcanic eruption probably would have happened somewhere in the tropics, but it is not clear exactly where or when. Various physical evidence does suggest that there was volcanic activity happening. That includes some tree ring evidence suggesting cold, Wet winters from 1345 to 1347 and volcanic sulfur found in ice samples from Antarctica and Greenland.
- [35:46]
Holly Fry
And to conclude this installment of Unearthed, a number of repatriations were reported on in the last three months of 2025, including cultural and ceremonial objects belonging to Indigenous and First nations communities in the United States and Canada, and children who died at Carlisle Indian Industrial School who were returned to the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. There were also a lot of looted and illegally sold artworks that were returned to their home countries. But one story in particular stood out to Tracy as different from some of what we have talked about on the show before. It's not exactly a repatriation, since both of the works it involves are still in the museum.
- [36:32]
Tracy V. Wilson
So in October, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, announced that it had reached an agreement with the descendants of David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, who made stoneware vessels while enslaved in Old Edgefield, South Carolina, in the 19th century. During his lifetime he made thousands of these vessels and he inscribed a lot of them with poetry, which is significant because at the time it was not legal for enslaved people to read or write. These jars were sold to benefit his enslaver, and Drake was not compensated for his work in the pottery that he made was not considered to be his. So the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston had acquired two of Drake's jars, one in 1997 and the other in 2011. And under this new agreement that was announced last October, the museum restored the ownership of both jars to Drake's descendants. It then repurchased one of the jars, called the Poem Jar, from the family. The other jar currently still belongs to the family, but they have loaned it to the museum long term.
- [37:44]
Holly Fry
That's sort of a lovely end to that story.
- [37:47]
Tracy V. Wilson
It is. And I've seen these jars and some of the other jars from the same era in the Museum of Fine Art. They're very striking. And so when I saw this headline number one, I was thinking about, oh, I've seen those jars. I know what we're talking about. But then also, I don't recall talking about the ownership of something being restored to the descendants of an enslaved person on the show before. So that is why I chose this one in particular to talk about in more depth than just briefly mentioning.
- [38:19]
Holly Fry
Have you also chosen a particular listener mail to talk about?
- [38:22]
Tracy V. Wilson
I sure have. This email is from Ruth hello. I'm a longtime listener since back in the short form days Sarah and deblina. It's been one of my constants in the podcast rotation for nearly 15 years. The reason for emailing today is that in your recent Christmas Carol podcast, the title of sans book History of the Violin perked my ears. I ran to my bookshelf and sure enough, I've been reading that very book off and on this year in my effort to learn more about the history of the instrument. I'm a lifelong violinist and a medieval reenactor, hence my interest. It is a wandering and dense read, and I must admit I'm only about 50 pages in, but I was delighted to hear the mention and that I recognized it. See cover of book and attached photo. I enjoyed the episode for many reasons, not the least of which being that my mother's name is Carol, and it was fun to learn the history of the word for pet tax, find my precocious and photogenic baby tuna Doodle Doo, the tuxedo and the lovely laser whose brain has no wrinkles. Thoughts just slide right off the void, baby. Much love and happy holidays. Ruthless okay, first of all, it did not occur to me that anyone would be reading the History of the Violin by William Sands in today's modern era. Except maybe, like, musical instrument historians. So the fact that someone is reading it right now, I just. I love it I love it so much. Also, boy am I not surprised that it is described in this email as wandering and dense. That feels absolutely like William Sands, Mo for writing things. We've also got good goodness. Just some really adorable kitty cats. I always love kitty cats. We have said many times I have two black cats that live in my house. They completely stole our hearts when we adopted them and they are great. Man. If you have cats in your life, I hope they let you snuggle them.
- [40:30]
Holly Fry
They don't have to be smart, they just have to be cats.
- [40:33]
Tracy V. Wilson
And if they don't let you snuggle them, I hope they bring joy into your life in some other way. Thank you so much Ruth for this email and the pictures. I love all of it. If you would 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 hear 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. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.