Cave of Wonders

Published Jul 18, 2019, 9:00 AM

Some things get lost beneath the soil and rocks of our world, while others disappear beneath the sands of time. Either way, they make great additions to the Cabinet.

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Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. War changes everything, the economy, the landscape, the people in and around it. War is uh stampede of wild elephants, leaving nothing but rubble in their wake. The costs are unfathomable. Some countries never recover, while others take years to get back even a piece of what they lost, and the soldiers who fight often lose a piece of themselves as well. But then there are the wars that don't change much. It's true, it does happen. In eighteen fifty nine, for example, a British owned black boar was shot by an American farmer on an island off the coast of Washington State. The dispute that ensued resulted in a war lasting a matter of weeks between the United States and Great Britain. Eventually, a deal was worked out and the conflict, known today as the Pig War, ended without a single lost life, well except the boars, that is. The Napoleonic Wars, however, changed a whole lot. Millions were killed over a span of twelve years as Napoleon worked his way across Europe. The United Kingdom, Austria, Sweden, and other countries worked to fight off the invading French Empire, eventually defeating Napoleon in eighteen fifteen at Waterloo. Spain was also heavily involved in the conflict. Its leaders had lost control of the country around eighteen o eight, and for six years they fought alongside the British and we're finally able to push the French forces out by eighteen fourteen. But one town had been ready to get its hands dirty from day one. The small town of west Car, the province of Granada didn't have much They didn't even have an army, only about eight guards to protect the town. But they wanted to help Spain put Ferdinand the Seventh back on the throne, so in eighteen o nine they declared war on Napoleon and his allies, specifically Denmark. Napoleon eventually lost no thanks to west Car and his brother, the acting king was banished from the Spanish throne. Spain and Denmark went on to sign the Treaty of Paris in eighteen fourteen. Which established France's borders and gave other countries their land back, thus ending Spain's fraught battle with the Emperor. West Car, however, never backed down. Even though Spain had found peace with France, the people of the small Spanish town remained at war with the Danes for years on seventy two in fact, and yet no shots were fired and neither side suffered a single casualty. So how could an entire country and a small Spanish town be at war with each other for that long without anyone dying or hearing about it? For that we can thank for Sente Gonzalez. Vicente was an official from west Car who found the original declaration in nineteen eighty one. As it turned out, after the treaty had been signed, the town simply forgot about the war. For one seventy two years, the two sides were engaged in a conflict neither was aware of. Once the declaration was discovered and made public, a Danish ambassador traveled to the small town on Armistice Day in nineteen one and signed a treaty, officially bringing an end to their war. Gifts were exchanged, with a mayor of west Car receiving a photo of the Danish queen, as well as books by the famous Danish children's author Hans Christian Anderson. In return, West Car renamed one of its streets Kaye Dina Marca or Denmark Street. Townspeople got the day off from work to celebrate and drink free wine while thousands of tourists flooded into town. Word has it a bus full of scandinavi and women even showed up dressed as Vikings. Two years later, the village of Lehar, about seventy miles away from West Car, also declared peace with France, and it only took them one d years. The king of Lehar had been offended during the visit to Paris in three and retaliated with a formal declaration of war, but neither side made a move and sold the declaration, just like West Cars, was lost to time. We're often reminded after major conflicts to never forget so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, for West Car and Lehar, somebody did forget and the conflict almost never stopped. Imagine going to work and while shuffling papers and updating spread sheets, you uncover a conspiracy or a scandal or some earth shattering information that sheds light on the customs and capabilities of past cultures. And when I say earth shattering, I mean it literally. In nineteen o two, construction workers had been building cisterns for an upcoming housing development when they accidentally stumbled upon a piece of history. It had remained hidden beneath the island of Malta undisturbed. They originally tried to hide their discovery, but doing so proved futile. The Mediterranean site was too big to conceal, and eventually one father, Emmanuel Margery, took on the task of digging a little deeper to see what exactly the workers had found. Margery began excavating in November of nineteen o three and worked for four years, slowly peeling back the layers of a place that had not been seen for over six thousand years. Bodies, hundreds of them, were hauled out along with other artifacts and tossed away because workers had no idea of the importance of the location, nor did they inventory anything that they found. Sadly, Father Maggrey had to stop the excavation to attend to submissionary work in Tunisia, where he ultimately died, but his excavation had not been forgotten. The dig was restarted a few years later by a Maltese archaeologist named Sir Domestically Zammitt, who did his best to pick up where Magrey left off. If only Magarey had taken better notes, he left behind a mess, lacking any kind of catalog of what had been discovered. Zammitt worked hard to continue the dig while also keeping detailed records for both himself and future historians who came after him. Excavation was completed in nineteen eleven, though visitors had been allowed inside during the process. Today it's called the hell sof ly Any Hypogeum, and it's home to pottery, jewelry, carvings, and almost seven thousand bodies dating back to about b C. It's a necropolis, part crypt, parts of mattery designed for large cities of the time. The hypogem itself consists of three levels, each bearing numerous chambers carved out of limestone. Holes were cut in the ceilings to allow light in as low as the middle level, and certain openings were designed for sunlight to pour in at specific times of the year, like the winter solstice. The chambers themselves had also been styled after the temples on the surface. Builders had included stone features on the ceilings, as well as spiral designs painted in red ochre. Since many of the temples above ground have degraded over time and lost their roofs, the preservation of the hypo gem has given historians a greater glimpse into the architectural prowess of the ancient Maltese. One room, known as the Oracle Room, is small and rectangular, and yet when someone speaks inside it, the acoustics amplify the sounds so it can be heard throughout much of the level. The Hypogeum also helps researchers understand how the islands and set Ster has handled death. It's believed that the burial process occurred in stages. Bodies were left out to decay until they were nothing more than bones. Those bones, along with their belongings, were then stacked with other remains and painted with red ochre to symbolize the blood in life that once ran through their veins. Unfortunately, the hypo gems preservation is the exact thing that's killing it. The presence of visitors to the site has altered carbon dioxide levels, temperature and humidity, as well as introduced micro organisms that are slowly devouring the temple from the inside out. Measures have been taken to restrict access to only eighty tourists per day, and designated pathways have been installed so that wandering feet don't trample the hypo gem's history out of existence. It's not certain how long the structure will last given its exposure to the rest of the world, but there's no telling what other secrets Malta has living just beneath the surface. There could be another crypt, or a secret city, or a vast treasurer waiting to be found. All it would take is a shovel and a bit of luck. Of that, I'm certain, make no bones about it. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com and until next time, stay curious,

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

From the creator of the hit podcast Lore comes a new, bite-sized storytelling experience. Each twice 
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