Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Tracy V.

I'm Tracy V.

Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

This is the.

This is the.

Second part of our Unearthed for the end of twenty twenty three, and today we are going to be talking about the shipwrecks and the art and just so many things that are about animals. As is often the case, we will be starting off with some things that didn't really fit into categories, which I always call the potpourri. And if you are a regular listener to Unearthed, you might be thinking normally there's repatriations somewhere on the list. We aren't talking about them this time, and we will talk about why that is in the behind the scenes on Friday. So on to Pope Pourri renovations work at Saint George's Guildhall in kings Lynn unearthed floorboards dating back to the fifteenth century, meaning that they likely would have been in place when William Shakespeare is believed to have performed there in fifteen ninety two or fifteen ninety three. This is based on an account book from those years, which shows the Earl of Pembroke's Men being paid to perform in King's Lynn while the London theaters were closed because of plague. The Earl of Pembroke's Men performed some of Shakespeare's plays, but it's not conclusively established whether he was with them at that time. So these boards were dated using tree ring analysis, and if that dating is correct, this may be the only surviving fifteenth century timber floor in all of England. A replacement floor had been installed over those original floorboards about seventy five years ago. Saint George's Guildhall is the oldest working theater in England, so even if Shakespeare himself did not actually perform on that original floor or the theater still has its own historic importance. Also in one of the funniest quotes in the research for this installment of Unearthed, Michael Dobson, director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stretford upon Avon, told The Times quote, I don't think it's hugely important unless you're a kind of fetishist who really thinks that having a piece of wood that has probably been touched by Shakespeare's foot is going to make an enormous difference to your understanding of the place, which.

Second part of our Unearthed for the end of twenty twenty three, and today we are going to be talking about the shipwrecks and the art and just so many things that are about animals. As is often the case, we will be starting off with some things that didn't really fit into categories, which I always call the potpourri. And if you are a regular listener to Unearthed, you might be thinking normally there's repatriations somewhere on the list. We aren't talking about them this time, and we will talk about why that is in the behind the scenes on Friday. So on to Pope Pourri renovations work at Saint George's Guildhall in kings Lynn unearthed floorboards dating back to the fifteenth century, meaning that they likely would have been in place when William Shakespeare is believed to have performed there in fifteen ninety two or fifteen ninety three. This is based on an account book from those years, which shows the Earl of Pembroke's Men being paid to perform in King's Lynn while the London theaters were closed because of plague. The Earl of Pembroke's Men performed some of Shakespeare's plays, but it's not conclusively established whether he was with them at that time. So these boards were dated using tree ring analysis, and if that dating is correct, this may be the only surviving fifteenth century timber floor in all of England. A replacement floor had been installed over those original floorboards about seventy five years ago. Saint George's Guildhall is the oldest working theater in England, so even if Shakespeare himself did not actually perform on that original floor or the theater still has its own historic importance. Also in one of the funniest quotes in the research for this installment of Unearthed, Michael Dobson, director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stretford upon Avon, told The Times quote, I don't think it's hugely important unless you're a kind of fetishist who really thinks that having a piece of wood that has probably been touched by Shakespeare's foot is going to make an enormous difference to your understanding of the place, which.

I rather doubt. I read that and I laughed out loud.

I rather doubt. I read that and I laughed out loud.

I love him for this because it was my almost exact reaction when I heard this story.

I love him for this because it was my almost exact reaction when I heard this story.

Yeah, I'm like why though, why?

Yeah, I'm like why though, why?

Yeah, it's like kind of a cool little bit of trivia if Shakespeare did perform on this exact floor, but we don't actually know for sure, and also does it matter anyway. Next, archaeologists in northern Spain have found a Roman era sandal in a well, presumably lost by somebody who was cleaning that well about two thousand years ago. I can think of some other scenarios that would wind up with the sandal in the well, but like every article about this says somebody was cleaning it. This is one of only about twenty sandals that have been found from what was Roman Hispania. And in addition to that, it's really heavily decorated with this pattern of circles and ovals and other shapes. Like when I first saw a picture of it, I was like, I'm not, is this the sole of a modern shoe? Like I had a moment where I doubted what I was looking at because there was no oxygen at the bottom of the well. This sandal is very well preserved, and it was frozen so it could be you know, preserved in that state until it could go for actual cleaning and preservation. Once all of that's done, it is planned to be exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Asturius. H potpourri is brief this time, and this is our last bit. Researchers have determined that a piece of iron found in a gravesite in Bavaria in twenty seventeen was a prosthetic hand. Archaeologists concluded that the person buried at this site was a man between the ages of thirty and fifty, and based on radiocarbon dating, he died sometime between fourteen fifty and sixteen twenty. X rays of his arm and hand suggest that his fingers may have been amputated and the bones of his thumb were still present. So this prosthesis had four slightly curved, immobile fingers. They were each made from sheet metal, and there were remnants of a gauze like fabric that suggested there was cushioning on the inside of it. This prosthesis was probably secured to his arm using straps, although the straps haven't survived.

Yeah, it's like kind of a cool little bit of trivia if Shakespeare did perform on this exact floor, but we don't actually know for sure, and also does it matter anyway. Next, archaeologists in northern Spain have found a Roman era sandal in a well, presumably lost by somebody who was cleaning that well about two thousand years ago. I can think of some other scenarios that would wind up with the sandal in the well, but like every article about this says somebody was cleaning it. This is one of only about twenty sandals that have been found from what was Roman Hispania. And in addition to that, it's really heavily decorated with this pattern of circles and ovals and other shapes. Like when I first saw a picture of it, I was like, I'm not, is this the sole of a modern shoe? Like I had a moment where I doubted what I was looking at because there was no oxygen at the bottom of the well. This sandal is very well preserved, and it was frozen so it could be you know, preserved in that state until it could go for actual cleaning and preservation. Once all of that's done, it is planned to be exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Asturius. H potpourri is brief this time, and this is our last bit. Researchers have determined that a piece of iron found in a gravesite in Bavaria in twenty seventeen was a prosthetic hand. Archaeologists concluded that the person buried at this site was a man between the ages of thirty and fifty, and based on radiocarbon dating, he died sometime between fourteen fifty and sixteen twenty. X rays of his arm and hand suggest that his fingers may have been amputated and the bones of his thumb were still present. So this prosthesis had four slightly curved, immobile fingers. They were each made from sheet metal, and there were remnants of a gauze like fabric that suggested there was cushioning on the inside of it. This prosthesis was probably secured to his arm using straps, although the straps haven't survived.

This is one of.

This is one of.

About fifty prostheses that have been found in Central Europe dating back to the medieval and early modern period, and some of them, like this one, were sort of an immobile peace, but others were articulated and had various mechanical elements that could let a person do things like move the prosthetic fingers and hold objects with them. It's time for art, my favorite. A room that has recently opened to the public at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy is believed to be where Michelangelo hid after being sentenced to death by Pope Clement the seventh. The pope was part of the Medici family, which had been in control of Florence until being overthrown in a populist revolt in fifteen thirty seven. After the Medici's return to power, the Pope sentence Michelangelo to death because he had worked for the Republican government that had briefly displaced the Medicis. Michelangelo was in hiding for about two months until the pope lifted that death sentence. So this basilica is part of the Museum of the Medici Chapels and the space known as the Steanza Cigretta or the Secret Room, was discovered there in nineteen seventy five. Are Horror had been assigned to clean part of the walls with the hope that the space could be used to make a new visitor's entrance to Basilica, but it turned out that under the layers of plaster, the walls were just covered in sketches, and those sketches are believed to have been drawn by Michelangelo, although it is not conclusively proven that he is the person who drew them. This is a very small, narrow room, mostly built below street level, with only one small window. While it is open to the public, access is very limited. Only four visitors are allowed in at a time, can only stay for fifteen minutes, and then there's a forty five minute break to reduce how much the space is exposed to light, so that means that only about one hundred visitors can see this space each week next. According to research published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, an object shown in the painting at Tianchevelle Saint Stephen by Jean Fouquet maybe a prehistoric hand axe. This painting is part of the malundiptych that was commissioned by Ettien Chevalier, and it depicts him with his hands folded in prayer next to his patron saint. His patron saint is holding a copy of the New Testament with this object resting on the.

About fifty prostheses that have been found in Central Europe dating back to the medieval and early modern period, and some of them, like this one, were sort of an immobile peace, but others were articulated and had various mechanical elements that could let a person do things like move the prosthetic fingers and hold objects with them. It's time for art, my favorite. A room that has recently opened to the public at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy is believed to be where Michelangelo hid after being sentenced to death by Pope Clement the seventh. The pope was part of the Medici family, which had been in control of Florence until being overthrown in a populist revolt in fifteen thirty seven. After the Medici's return to power, the Pope sentence Michelangelo to death because he had worked for the Republican government that had briefly displaced the Medicis. Michelangelo was in hiding for about two months until the pope lifted that death sentence. So this basilica is part of the Museum of the Medici Chapels and the space known as the Steanza Cigretta or the Secret Room, was discovered there in nineteen seventy five. Are Horror had been assigned to clean part of the walls with the hope that the space could be used to make a new visitor's entrance to Basilica, but it turned out that under the layers of plaster, the walls were just covered in sketches, and those sketches are believed to have been drawn by Michelangelo, although it is not conclusively proven that he is the person who drew them. This is a very small, narrow room, mostly built below street level, with only one small window. While it is open to the public, access is very limited. Only four visitors are allowed in at a time, can only stay for fifteen minutes, and then there's a forty five minute break to reduce how much the space is exposed to light, so that means that only about one hundred visitors can see this space each week next. According to research published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, an object shown in the painting at Tianchevelle Saint Stephen by Jean Fouquet maybe a prehistoric hand axe. This painting is part of the malundiptych that was commissioned by Ettien Chevalier, and it depicts him with his hands folded in prayer next to his patron saint. His patron saint is holding a copy of the New Testament with this object resting on the.

Top of it.

Top of it.

This object has usually before now been described as just something like a jagged stone, but Stephen Kangis, lecturer in the Department of Art History at Dartmouth, had for a long time thought it resembled a hand axe. He eventually discussed this with other professors and they collaborated with colleagues at the University of Cambridge to analyze the object shape, color, and flake scars, comparing that to stone tools known as Eshulian hand axes those were common about five hundred thousand years ago. They found that its shape and flake scars were similar to hand axes used in the region where the image was painted. Color was a little harder to determine, since pigments and varnishes used on the painting may not reflect the real object, but the amount of color variation in the image suggests that the artist was recreating the details of a real stone object. So for centuries hand axes and other flaked or ground prehistoric objects have been a source of fascination and study, although centuries ago people did not really have a sense of exactly what these were.

This object has usually before now been described as just something like a jagged stone, but Stephen Kangis, lecturer in the Department of Art History at Dartmouth, had for a long time thought it resembled a hand axe. He eventually discussed this with other professors and they collaborated with colleagues at the University of Cambridge to analyze the object shape, color, and flake scars, comparing that to stone tools known as Eshulian hand axes those were common about five hundred thousand years ago. They found that its shape and flake scars were similar to hand axes used in the region where the image was painted. Color was a little harder to determine, since pigments and varnishes used on the painting may not reflect the real object, but the amount of color variation in the image suggests that the artist was recreating the details of a real stone object. So for centuries hand axes and other flaked or ground prehistoric objects have been a source of fascination and study, although centuries ago people did not really have a sense of exactly what these were.

Or how old they were.

Or how old they were.

In Europe, this included folklore around the idea that these were thunder stones created in the sky by lightning strikes. The first written record of the term thunderstones, describing what was probably a prehistoric hand axe, dates back to the mid fifteen hundreds. This painting, though, was made in about fourteen fifty five, so if it really does depict a hand axe, this kind of pushes back the social history of these hand axes in Europe by about one hundred years. I want to develop a whole thor theory around this, but that's just sure. In our last art find, the UK National Trust restored four paintings by Joshua Reynolds in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of his birth, and in his painting The Death of Cardinal Beaufort, painted in seventeen eighty nine, they uncovered a demon lake figure that had at some point been painted over. So this painting depicts a scene from Shakespeare's Henry the sixth part two, in which the King at the cardinal's deathbed says, quote all beat away the busy meddling fiend that lays strong siege onto this wretch's soul, and from his bosom purge this black despair. So this is read as something that was going on within the cardinal inner world, but Reynolds painted an actual fiend peering out from behind a curtain. This was incredibly controversial when the painting was first shown at the Shakespeare Gallery, which had also commissioned it. Basically, a lot of people thought Shakespeare's words had been figurative or metaphorical, and that Reynolds should have stuck with that, having you know, the maybe metaphorical anguish on his face, rather than depicting an actual devil in the painting. I love this literalist reading of so much drama about this fiend in the painting. So the fiend was ultimately painted over, and there was also an attempt to remove it from the printing plate for a second run of prints in seventeen ninety two, after Reynolds had died. Removing the layers of paint and varnish obscuring the Fiend took restorers about six months yeah. I'm not sure whether Reynolds was pressured into painting it over or if somebody else did it after he died. That was not clear to me from the reporting on this. But anyway, that's the last of the art, and we will take a quick break and come back for animals. Now we have some animals, in fact, many animals. This whole section of the episode is just going to be animals. According to research published in the journal Environmental Archaeology, ancient Egypt may have had more types of venomous snakes than it does today. This came from an analysis of a medical treatise known as the Brooklyn Papyrus, which dates back to some time between six sixty and three thirty BCE. It is called the Brooklyn Papyrus because it was donated to the Brooklyn Museum in the nineteen thirties. It lists thirty seven different species of venomous snakes, although the descriptions of thirteen of those have been lost, but modern Egypt has fewer venomous snake species than that. There are eight species that are capable of causing significant envenoming if they bite something, and then a few others can cause minor envenoming. One of the snakes was described as the great snake of a Pofis, Apofos being a deity that took the form of a serpent. This snake is described as having four fangs, which is not the case for any snake currently living in Egypt. The snake living closest to modern Egypt that does have four fangs is the Boomslang, which lives farther south in Africa. Its range starts about four hundred miles or six hundred and fifty kilometers south of modern Egypt. So the basic idea here is that snakes that currently live in tropical Africa, including the Boomslang, may have been able to live in ancient Egypt, which was wetter and more humid than Egypt is to say. The team identified snakes that could plausibly have lived in this environment from thousands of years ago, and then they used niche modeling, which is also known as species distribution modeling, to try to predict where ten identified snake species might have lived around four thousand years ago, and then they also tested proposed identifications for some of the species that were described in the papyrus. According to their modeling, nine of the ten snakes that they examined could have lived in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago. This was likeliest in the more southern and southeastern parts of the region and along the Nile Valley and the Red Sea coast. This included the boom slang and the puff adder, both of which aligned with descriptions of snakes from the Brooklyn Papyrus. And speaking of snakes in Egypt, archaeologists in Egypts have also found a burial chamber belonging to a scribe that was adorned with spell that were meant to ward off snake bites. So this chamber is roughly twenty five hundred years old. It belonged to a royal scribe who died at the age of about twenty five and these inscriptions, which are on the north wall, both described the snakes as protectors of the deceased and served to protect his mummy from bites. So I don't know if these were literal or figurative snakes, but they were there to protect him. But also they wanted to make sure that the snakes did not bite his mummy. This is they wanted to keep Indiana Jones out.

In Europe, this included folklore around the idea that these were thunder stones created in the sky by lightning strikes. The first written record of the term thunderstones, describing what was probably a prehistoric hand axe, dates back to the mid fifteen hundreds. This painting, though, was made in about fourteen fifty five, so if it really does depict a hand axe, this kind of pushes back the social history of these hand axes in Europe by about one hundred years. I want to develop a whole thor theory around this, but that's just sure. In our last art find, the UK National Trust restored four paintings by Joshua Reynolds in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of his birth, and in his painting The Death of Cardinal Beaufort, painted in seventeen eighty nine, they uncovered a demon lake figure that had at some point been painted over. So this painting depicts a scene from Shakespeare's Henry the sixth part two, in which the King at the cardinal's deathbed says, quote all beat away the busy meddling fiend that lays strong siege onto this wretch's soul, and from his bosom purge this black despair. So this is read as something that was going on within the cardinal inner world, but Reynolds painted an actual fiend peering out from behind a curtain. This was incredibly controversial when the painting was first shown at the Shakespeare Gallery, which had also commissioned it. Basically, a lot of people thought Shakespeare's words had been figurative or metaphorical, and that Reynolds should have stuck with that, having you know, the maybe metaphorical anguish on his face, rather than depicting an actual devil in the painting. I love this literalist reading of so much drama about this fiend in the painting. So the fiend was ultimately painted over, and there was also an attempt to remove it from the printing plate for a second run of prints in seventeen ninety two, after Reynolds had died. Removing the layers of paint and varnish obscuring the Fiend took restorers about six months yeah. I'm not sure whether Reynolds was pressured into painting it over or if somebody else did it after he died. That was not clear to me from the reporting on this. But anyway, that's the last of the art, and we will take a quick break and come back for animals. Now we have some animals, in fact, many animals. This whole section of the episode is just going to be animals. According to research published in the journal Environmental Archaeology, ancient Egypt may have had more types of venomous snakes than it does today. This came from an analysis of a medical treatise known as the Brooklyn Papyrus, which dates back to some time between six sixty and three thirty BCE. It is called the Brooklyn Papyrus because it was donated to the Brooklyn Museum in the nineteen thirties. It lists thirty seven different species of venomous snakes, although the descriptions of thirteen of those have been lost, but modern Egypt has fewer venomous snake species than that. There are eight species that are capable of causing significant envenoming if they bite something, and then a few others can cause minor envenoming. One of the snakes was described as the great snake of a Pofis, Apofos being a deity that took the form of a serpent. This snake is described as having four fangs, which is not the case for any snake currently living in Egypt. The snake living closest to modern Egypt that does have four fangs is the Boomslang, which lives farther south in Africa. Its range starts about four hundred miles or six hundred and fifty kilometers south of modern Egypt. So the basic idea here is that snakes that currently live in tropical Africa, including the Boomslang, may have been able to live in ancient Egypt, which was wetter and more humid than Egypt is to say. The team identified snakes that could plausibly have lived in this environment from thousands of years ago, and then they used niche modeling, which is also known as species distribution modeling, to try to predict where ten identified snake species might have lived around four thousand years ago, and then they also tested proposed identifications for some of the species that were described in the papyrus. According to their modeling, nine of the ten snakes that they examined could have lived in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago. This was likeliest in the more southern and southeastern parts of the region and along the Nile Valley and the Red Sea coast. This included the boom slang and the puff adder, both of which aligned with descriptions of snakes from the Brooklyn Papyrus. And speaking of snakes in Egypt, archaeologists in Egypts have also found a burial chamber belonging to a scribe that was adorned with spell that were meant to ward off snake bites. So this chamber is roughly twenty five hundred years old. It belonged to a royal scribe who died at the age of about twenty five and these inscriptions, which are on the north wall, both described the snakes as protectors of the deceased and served to protect his mummy from bites. So I don't know if these were literal or figurative snakes, but they were there to protect him. But also they wanted to make sure that the snakes did not bite his mummy. This is they wanted to keep Indiana Jones out.

That's what it was.

That's what it was.

Now we've got some studies about beavers. Beavers became extinct in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century and then were reintroduced in nineteen eighty eight, and their population has been growing there in recent years. And according to research published in the Holocene, beavers were a key part of the diets of prehistoric people in the Netherlands as well as other parts of northern Europe. They also played a major role in the ecosystems where they lived. According to this research, beavers were one of the most common mammals found at archaeological sites of hunter gatherer communities in the Netherlands. So in addition to using beavers for their meats and their pelts and teeth and bones, and for the glandular substance known as castorium, Mesolithic hunter gatherer peoples also benefited from the landscapes that beavers created with their lodges and dams. When the beavers daml water source, the resulting landscape is often home to other animals, including an abundance of fish and otters and waterfowl. It is possible, according to this research, that people specifically sought out places where beavers were living when they were deciding where to make their homes and we have another beaver find. Research in eastern Germany also shows that people were hunting beavers much earlier than previously thought, as long as four hundred thousand years ago. This comes from the careful examination of the remains of ninety four beavers using magnifying glasses and digital microscopes to look for evidence that they had been cut with stone tools. They found that most of the ones that showed evidence of cut marks were young adults, suggesting that they were fully grown but not particularly experienced animals. The paper didn't say this, but I read it as being that they were not as adept at staying out of people's way, right, They had not developed their savvy yet.

Now we've got some studies about beavers. Beavers became extinct in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century and then were reintroduced in nineteen eighty eight, and their population has been growing there in recent years. And according to research published in the Holocene, beavers were a key part of the diets of prehistoric people in the Netherlands as well as other parts of northern Europe. They also played a major role in the ecosystems where they lived. According to this research, beavers were one of the most common mammals found at archaeological sites of hunter gatherer communities in the Netherlands. So in addition to using beavers for their meats and their pelts and teeth and bones, and for the glandular substance known as castorium, Mesolithic hunter gatherer peoples also benefited from the landscapes that beavers created with their lodges and dams. When the beavers daml water source, the resulting landscape is often home to other animals, including an abundance of fish and otters and waterfowl. It is possible, according to this research, that people specifically sought out places where beavers were living when they were deciding where to make their homes and we have another beaver find. Research in eastern Germany also shows that people were hunting beavers much earlier than previously thought, as long as four hundred thousand years ago. This comes from the careful examination of the remains of ninety four beavers using magnifying glasses and digital microscopes to look for evidence that they had been cut with stone tools. They found that most of the ones that showed evidence of cut marks were young adults, suggesting that they were fully grown but not particularly experienced animals. The paper didn't say this, but I read it as being that they were not as adept at staying out of people's way, right, They had not developed their savvy yet.

Right.

Right.

We have talked on previous installments of Unearthed about the assumption that ancient hunter gatherers mostly hunted really large animals, the idea being that smaller animals like beaver just would not provide enough resources to be worth the effort of hunting them. But the researchers involved with this project suggested a different possibility, which is that the bones of larger animals from this far back in history are usually better preserved than those of smaller animals, making it easier to find them and study them and see evidence of their being cut or processed by humans. Next, according to research published in the journal Antiquity, researchers have found the oldest known use of shark teeth in composite weapons. These are two weapons with blades made from the teeth of tiger sharks found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. They're about seven thousand years old, which is two thousand years older than the previous oldest known shark tooth knives. These teeth were affixed to a handle using a glue like substance and plant fibers, which is still a technique used by people living in parts of the Pacific. These teeth showed evidence of having been used to pierce and cut flesh and bone, but according to the researchers, it was unlikely that these knives were for everyday purposes. Shark teeth get dull very quickly. Living sharks are just continually growing new teeth, so it is more likely that these knives were used maybe for ritual purposes or in some kind of combat, not something that you would have just cut your food with every day. I'm literally picturing like a teenager of this era making it and going doesn't this look cool? Like there's no real use Next, A couple of different teams have looked at baboons in ancient Egypt. While baboons do not live in Egypt today and there's no evidence to suggest that they did so in the past, baboons were brought to Egypt from elsewhere, kept in captivity, and mummified after their debts. Research published in the journal eLife tried to pin down exactly where these baboons came from. They compared the mitochondrial DNA of mummified baboons to the DNA of modern baboons, as well as the DNA from one hundred to one hundred and fifty year old baboons specimens in museum collections. One of the collaborators on this paper had previously identified the general region of the Horn of Africa as where most of these animals had been born and had lived during their early years. We talked about this on an episode of Unearthed in twenty twenty. This year's research narrowed the area further to a specific part of Eritrea and neighboring regions. This area was home to the ancient port of Adulis. As we mentioned in that twenty twenty installment of Unearthed, this overlaps with research into the exact location of the Kingdom of Punt, something that we also talked about in our episode on Hat Sheepsit's expeditions to Punt, which came out in twenty nineteen. The baboons were described as having come from Punt, so it is possible that Punt was an earlier name for that same ancient port. The other baboon research published late last year looked at the living conditions of these animals while they were kept in captivity in Egypt. Egyptians held these animals in very high regard and they were believed to be representations of the god TOAs, but they weren't actually treated very well, or at least given the kind of treatment they needed to be healthy. This research looked at the mummies of thirty six baboons, which lived between eight hundred and five hundred BCE, and found that many of them had signs of rickets or a deficiency of vitamin D, probably because of being kept indoors and away from natural sunlight. Otherwise, they didn't show evidence of being abused or mistreated. But only four of the mummies they studied were those of animals who seemed to be in actual good health. Researchers who were interviewed about this work stressed that they didn't think the people who cared for these animals met them any harm. But since baboons are very good climbers, if you wanted to keep them in captivity, they had to be in enclosures that had very high walls, and these would have blocked out most of the sunlight. Archaeologists in China have found evidence of a chariot in Shanxi Province, one that would have been drawn by sheep rather than the more commonly used horses or oxen. The body of the chariot has not survived until today, but the rigging used to pull it was still evident on the bones of the sheep. This chariot was found in the mausoleum of an emperor who ruled between two twenty one to two ten BCE, which was hundreds of years before the first written mention of a sheep drawn chariot that appears in an account of Emperor sima Yan of the Western Jin dynasty, who lived from two sixty five to three sixteen and is said to have ridden a sheep drawn chariot to the palace every night before going to sleep. Moving on, archaeologists also believe they have found the oldest true saddle in East Asia, one that involved a wooden frame covered in horse hide with a pommel, a cantle, and stirrups, as well as various straps, states back to around the fourth century, meaning it's also one of the earliest known frame saddles in the world. This suggests that cultures living on the steps of western and northern Mongolia, where the saddle was found, were early adopters of both frame saddles and stirrups, and helped spread these technologies to other parts of the world and in our last animal snd Coast Salish people and researchers from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have worked to study the pelt of a dog named Mutton, who was donated to the Smithsonian by naturalist and ethnographer George Gibbs after the dog died in eighteen fifty nine. Mutton was a wooly dog, which was a type of dog that Coast Salish nations bred and cared for for thousands of years, but which had died out by the turn of the twentieth century. Wooly dogs had a very thick pelt and they were sheared like sheep, and Mutton's pelt is the only known wooly dog's flot left in the world. This wool was used to make things like blankets and other woven items, some of which were used for ceremonial and spiritual purposes. This project included the work of anthropologists, an evolutionary molecular biologist, and elders, knowledge keepers, and master weavers from Coast Salish nations who provided the context for how these dogs lived in Coast Salish societies. And the words of anthropologist Logan Kissler, the museum's curator of Archaeobotany and Archaeogenomics, quote, Coast Salish traditional perspective was the entire context for understanding the study's findings. Michael Povel, an elder from the Skacomish Tauana Coast Salish community in Washington, said, quote, we were very excited to participate in a study that embraces the most sophisticated Western science with the most established traditional knowledge. It was incredibly rewarding to contribute to this effort to race and celebrate our understanding of the wooly dog. Many of the Coast Salish people who were part of this work were cited in the paper as co authors, and the text of the interviews conducted with Coast Salish people is included in the paper's supplemental materials. Researchers also compared Mutton's DNA to that of other dogs to try to determine what made the wooly dog's coat so different and when this breed split off from other dogs. They found that this likely happened at least five thousand years ago, and Coast Salish people continued to carefully breed these dogs long after other dogs were introduced to the area. At least eighty five percent of Mutton's genetic ancestry came from precolonial dogs. The researchers work with Coast Salish people also contradicted earlier assumptions about what caused the populations of these dogs to decline. Scholars had generally concluded that the introduction of machine made blankets into the region in the nineteenth century meant that the dogs were no longer seen as a priority, but indigenous experts cited other factors, including the introduction of diseases, forced assimilation and genocide that caused indigenous populations to decline, along with other external factors that made it increasingly difficult for coast Salish people to care for these dogs. Essentially, the indigenous people who were interviewed as part of this research made it clear that the dogs were too important to their communities to have just been forgotten about because of machine made blankets. And that is the last if our animal finds this time, and we will take a quick sponsor break before we move on to shipwrecks. It is time for a number of shipwrecks. A fourth century shipwreck discovered off the coast of Sales in twenty twenty was named the MARIUSA two because of its similarity to another shipwreck by the same name that had been found not far away in nineteen ninety nine. Last year, this second ship was raised up from the seabed intact, something that was possible because it was both very well preserved and was only in about six feet or one point eight meters of water. After underwater archaeologists documented this site, the wreck was basically surrounded in a cage and then secured with nets lifted from the seafloor with floatation devices and towed to shore. From there, it was transported by road to an archaeological museum for desalination and study. So the research on this one is ongoing. I just find making a big cage to lift a shipwreck up off the ocean floor. I found the whole process of that fascinating. I know it's not the only time we've raised a ship off the ocean floor.

We have talked on previous installments of Unearthed about the assumption that ancient hunter gatherers mostly hunted really large animals, the idea being that smaller animals like beaver just would not provide enough resources to be worth the effort of hunting them. But the researchers involved with this project suggested a different possibility, which is that the bones of larger animals from this far back in history are usually better preserved than those of smaller animals, making it easier to find them and study them and see evidence of their being cut or processed by humans. Next, according to research published in the journal Antiquity, researchers have found the oldest known use of shark teeth in composite weapons. These are two weapons with blades made from the teeth of tiger sharks found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. They're about seven thousand years old, which is two thousand years older than the previous oldest known shark tooth knives. These teeth were affixed to a handle using a glue like substance and plant fibers, which is still a technique used by people living in parts of the Pacific. These teeth showed evidence of having been used to pierce and cut flesh and bone, but according to the researchers, it was unlikely that these knives were for everyday purposes. Shark teeth get dull very quickly. Living sharks are just continually growing new teeth, so it is more likely that these knives were used maybe for ritual purposes or in some kind of combat, not something that you would have just cut your food with every day. I'm literally picturing like a teenager of this era making it and going doesn't this look cool? Like there's no real use Next, A couple of different teams have looked at baboons in ancient Egypt. While baboons do not live in Egypt today and there's no evidence to suggest that they did so in the past, baboons were brought to Egypt from elsewhere, kept in captivity, and mummified after their debts. Research published in the journal eLife tried to pin down exactly where these baboons came from. They compared the mitochondrial DNA of mummified baboons to the DNA of modern baboons, as well as the DNA from one hundred to one hundred and fifty year old baboons specimens in museum collections. One of the collaborators on this paper had previously identified the general region of the Horn of Africa as where most of these animals had been born and had lived during their early years. We talked about this on an episode of Unearthed in twenty twenty. This year's research narrowed the area further to a specific part of Eritrea and neighboring regions. This area was home to the ancient port of Adulis. As we mentioned in that twenty twenty installment of Unearthed, this overlaps with research into the exact location of the Kingdom of Punt, something that we also talked about in our episode on Hat Sheepsit's expeditions to Punt, which came out in twenty nineteen. The baboons were described as having come from Punt, so it is possible that Punt was an earlier name for that same ancient port. The other baboon research published late last year looked at the living conditions of these animals while they were kept in captivity in Egypt. Egyptians held these animals in very high regard and they were believed to be representations of the god TOAs, but they weren't actually treated very well, or at least given the kind of treatment they needed to be healthy. This research looked at the mummies of thirty six baboons, which lived between eight hundred and five hundred BCE, and found that many of them had signs of rickets or a deficiency of vitamin D, probably because of being kept indoors and away from natural sunlight. Otherwise, they didn't show evidence of being abused or mistreated. But only four of the mummies they studied were those of animals who seemed to be in actual good health. Researchers who were interviewed about this work stressed that they didn't think the people who cared for these animals met them any harm. But since baboons are very good climbers, if you wanted to keep them in captivity, they had to be in enclosures that had very high walls, and these would have blocked out most of the sunlight. Archaeologists in China have found evidence of a chariot in Shanxi Province, one that would have been drawn by sheep rather than the more commonly used horses or oxen. The body of the chariot has not survived until today, but the rigging used to pull it was still evident on the bones of the sheep. This chariot was found in the mausoleum of an emperor who ruled between two twenty one to two ten BCE, which was hundreds of years before the first written mention of a sheep drawn chariot that appears in an account of Emperor sima Yan of the Western Jin dynasty, who lived from two sixty five to three sixteen and is said to have ridden a sheep drawn chariot to the palace every night before going to sleep. Moving on, archaeologists also believe they have found the oldest true saddle in East Asia, one that involved a wooden frame covered in horse hide with a pommel, a cantle, and stirrups, as well as various straps, states back to around the fourth century, meaning it's also one of the earliest known frame saddles in the world. This suggests that cultures living on the steps of western and northern Mongolia, where the saddle was found, were early adopters of both frame saddles and stirrups, and helped spread these technologies to other parts of the world and in our last animal snd Coast Salish people and researchers from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have worked to study the pelt of a dog named Mutton, who was donated to the Smithsonian by naturalist and ethnographer George Gibbs after the dog died in eighteen fifty nine. Mutton was a wooly dog, which was a type of dog that Coast Salish nations bred and cared for for thousands of years, but which had died out by the turn of the twentieth century. Wooly dogs had a very thick pelt and they were sheared like sheep, and Mutton's pelt is the only known wooly dog's flot left in the world. This wool was used to make things like blankets and other woven items, some of which were used for ceremonial and spiritual purposes. This project included the work of anthropologists, an evolutionary molecular biologist, and elders, knowledge keepers, and master weavers from Coast Salish nations who provided the context for how these dogs lived in Coast Salish societies. And the words of anthropologist Logan Kissler, the museum's curator of Archaeobotany and Archaeogenomics, quote, Coast Salish traditional perspective was the entire context for understanding the study's findings. Michael Povel, an elder from the Skacomish Tauana Coast Salish community in Washington, said, quote, we were very excited to participate in a study that embraces the most sophisticated Western science with the most established traditional knowledge. It was incredibly rewarding to contribute to this effort to race and celebrate our understanding of the wooly dog. Many of the Coast Salish people who were part of this work were cited in the paper as co authors, and the text of the interviews conducted with Coast Salish people is included in the paper's supplemental materials. Researchers also compared Mutton's DNA to that of other dogs to try to determine what made the wooly dog's coat so different and when this breed split off from other dogs. They found that this likely happened at least five thousand years ago, and Coast Salish people continued to carefully breed these dogs long after other dogs were introduced to the area. At least eighty five percent of Mutton's genetic ancestry came from precolonial dogs. The researchers work with Coast Salish people also contradicted earlier assumptions about what caused the populations of these dogs to decline. Scholars had generally concluded that the introduction of machine made blankets into the region in the nineteenth century meant that the dogs were no longer seen as a priority, but indigenous experts cited other factors, including the introduction of diseases, forced assimilation and genocide that caused indigenous populations to decline, along with other external factors that made it increasingly difficult for coast Salish people to care for these dogs. Essentially, the indigenous people who were interviewed as part of this research made it clear that the dogs were too important to their communities to have just been forgotten about because of machine made blankets. And that is the last if our animal finds this time, and we will take a quick sponsor break before we move on to shipwrecks. It is time for a number of shipwrecks. A fourth century shipwreck discovered off the coast of Sales in twenty twenty was named the MARIUSA two because of its similarity to another shipwreck by the same name that had been found not far away in nineteen ninety nine. Last year, this second ship was raised up from the seabed intact, something that was possible because it was both very well preserved and was only in about six feet or one point eight meters of water. After underwater archaeologists documented this site, the wreck was basically surrounded in a cage and then secured with nets lifted from the seafloor with floatation devices and towed to shore. From there, it was transported by road to an archaeological museum for desalination and study. So the research on this one is ongoing. I just find making a big cage to lift a shipwreck up off the ocean floor. I found the whole process of that fascinating. I know it's not the only time we've raised a ship off the ocean floor.

It is interesting, Yeah, but.

It is interesting, Yeah, but.

For one dating back to the fourth century, Like, what a delicate thing to need to try to raise up. Yes, this past summer, a team conducting sonar scans in Lake Superior found the wreck of a freighter called the Hourantum, announcing the find in October for the one hundredth anniversary of its sinking. The Herontin collided with the Cetus on October eleventh, nineteen twenty three, when Lake Superior was under a heavy fog and visibility was obscured even further because of smoke from wildfires. The SETAs hit the Heurnton on its port side, and the captain of the Seatus basically used the ship to plug the hole to give the Hourntan's crew time to escape, including a bulldog who was serving as the ship's mascot, who at first was accidentally left behind. But no worries about the dog, the first mate went back for him before the ship sank. This wreck is one of so many in Lake Superior, and it was found during a systemic search of the lake bed undiscovered wrecks. Thousands of vessels sank in the lake, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a lot of them are now being threatened by muscles, especially zebra muscles and quaga muscles. There is ongoing work to just try to find and document as many of these as possible before they are lost to these and other factors. Speaking of the Great Lakes, a father and daughter fishing in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Lake Michigan spotted a shipwreck on their sonar and that may be the remains of the George L.

For one dating back to the fourth century, Like, what a delicate thing to need to try to raise up. Yes, this past summer, a team conducting sonar scans in Lake Superior found the wreck of a freighter called the Hourantum, announcing the find in October for the one hundredth anniversary of its sinking. The Herontin collided with the Cetus on October eleventh, nineteen twenty three, when Lake Superior was under a heavy fog and visibility was obscured even further because of smoke from wildfires. The SETAs hit the Heurnton on its port side, and the captain of the Seatus basically used the ship to plug the hole to give the Hourntan's crew time to escape, including a bulldog who was serving as the ship's mascot, who at first was accidentally left behind. But no worries about the dog, the first mate went back for him before the ship sank. This wreck is one of so many in Lake Superior, and it was found during a systemic search of the lake bed undiscovered wrecks. Thousands of vessels sank in the lake, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a lot of them are now being threatened by muscles, especially zebra muscles and quaga muscles. There is ongoing work to just try to find and document as many of these as possible before they are lost to these and other factors. Speaking of the Great Lakes, a father and daughter fishing in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Lake Michigan spotted a shipwreck on their sonar and that may be the remains of the George L.

Newman. The George L.

Newman. The George L.

Newman sank during the Great Peshtigo Fire, which prior hosts of the show talked about in a twenty eleven episode called History's Unforgettable Fires. The ship ran aground because visibility was so poor due to the smoke that they could not see where they were going. The crew were rescued by a nearby lighthouse keeper. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources used a remote operated vehicle to take pictures of the wreck, and further research is expected in the spring next A crew with the Florida Department of Transportation found a shipwreck while working on a drainage improvement project in Saint Augustine. This was found more than eight feet underground and probably dates back to the mid to late nineteenth century. The ship's stern had been exposed at some point and was probably consumed by marine life, but the rest of the boat, which is believed to have been a single masted fishing vessel, is mostly intact. It's possible that the boat was abandoned along the edge of a waterway that has since been covered up by landfill. This wreck was taken to wet storage for preservation and further study.

Newman sank during the Great Peshtigo Fire, which prior hosts of the show talked about in a twenty eleven episode called History's Unforgettable Fires. The ship ran aground because visibility was so poor due to the smoke that they could not see where they were going. The crew were rescued by a nearby lighthouse keeper. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources used a remote operated vehicle to take pictures of the wreck, and further research is expected in the spring next A crew with the Florida Department of Transportation found a shipwreck while working on a drainage improvement project in Saint Augustine. This was found more than eight feet underground and probably dates back to the mid to late nineteenth century. The ship's stern had been exposed at some point and was probably consumed by marine life, but the rest of the boat, which is believed to have been a single masted fishing vessel, is mostly intact. It's possible that the boat was abandoned along the edge of a waterway that has since been covered up by landfill. This wreck was taken to wet storage for preservation and further study.

Moving on.

Moving on.

The Santase has come up on a few installments of an Earth. This is a galleon that the British sunk off the coast of Carnagena in seventeen oh eight. Its discovery was announced in twenty fifteen, which led to a dispute about who owned the enormous amount of gold and other valuable goods that it was carrying. It was a Spanish ship found off the coast of Columbia, and many of the precious metals aboard were mined by indigenous peoples. On top of all of that, a US salvage company claims to have originally found the wreck back in nineteen eighty one, and the latest update on this, President Gustavo Petro has ordered his administration to begin recovering the Rere's cargo in April or May, depending on sea conditions, intending to remove as much of it as possible from the wreck before his term in office ends in twenty twenty six. So this has of course added another layer of controversy to the ship, with some archaeologists arguing that it should be treated as an archaeological site, not as cargo to be retrieved. This past spring, we talked about the discovery of a shipwreck in Newport, Wales. This was found in the River Usk back in two thousand and two, and when we talked about it last year, it was being conserved with plans to eventually reassemble it and make it a public attraction. Now, study of the ship's timbers have pinpointed that it was built from trees that were cut down over the winter of fourteen fifty seven to fourteen fifty eight. Yes, this is sort of narrowing down exactly when it was built and hopefully eventually learning more about the exact.

The Santase has come up on a few installments of an Earth. This is a galleon that the British sunk off the coast of Carnagena in seventeen oh eight. Its discovery was announced in twenty fifteen, which led to a dispute about who owned the enormous amount of gold and other valuable goods that it was carrying. It was a Spanish ship found off the coast of Columbia, and many of the precious metals aboard were mined by indigenous peoples. On top of all of that, a US salvage company claims to have originally found the wreck back in nineteen eighty one, and the latest update on this, President Gustavo Petro has ordered his administration to begin recovering the Rere's cargo in April or May, depending on sea conditions, intending to remove as much of it as possible from the wreck before his term in office ends in twenty twenty six. So this has of course added another layer of controversy to the ship, with some archaeologists arguing that it should be treated as an archaeological site, not as cargo to be retrieved. This past spring, we talked about the discovery of a shipwreck in Newport, Wales. This was found in the River Usk back in two thousand and two, and when we talked about it last year, it was being conserved with plans to eventually reassemble it and make it a public attraction. Now, study of the ship's timbers have pinpointed that it was built from trees that were cut down over the winter of fourteen fifty seven to fourteen fifty eight. Yes, this is sort of narrowing down exactly when it was built and hopefully eventually learning more about the exact.

Ship that it was.

Ship that it was.

Next, the wreck of the SS Dix has been found in Puget Sound in Washington. The dis was working as a ferry, part of a collection of privately owned vessels known as the Mosquito Fleet that operated in the area for about a century. Obviously, there are still lots of ferries in the Seattle area, but this was before a lot of the roads and bridges that connect Farrious Islands were there. There were a lot more ferries operating. The Dix was taking passengers from Seattle to Bainbridge Island when it sank in nineteen oh six after colliding with the SS Genie. At least forty two passengers died, making one of Seattle's worst maritime disasters. This wreck was apparently found all the way back in twenty fifteen, but not announced until now. Experts working with the seventeenth century Swedish warship Vasa have said it urgently needs a new structural support system. The wreck was raised from the Baltic Sea in nineteen sixty one and it's been displayed at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm since nineteen ninety. But the existing steel cradle is putting uneven pressure on parts of the ship, and the ship itself is deteriorating due to the effects of pollution it absorbed from the water while it was still submerged. This is something the museum has been studying and working on for years, and now it has reached the point that it has to raise the funds to pay for it. The Vasa Museum is self funded and the estimated cost of a new support structure is one hundred and fifty million kroner. And we will close out our shipwrecks with a few items that came from Rex, not the themselves. A steamship called the Saint Lucy sank off the coast of Miami on October eighteenth, nineteen oh six, during a hurricane. That ship was eventually raised from the seafloor, repaired, and put back into use, but researchers announced the discovery of its anchor in November. Maritime archaeologist Joshua Morto had been showing two summer interns around Biscayne National Park when he noticed a sea turtle behaving strangely and then saw it sitting underneath this anchor. This is an anchor, so of course it is extremely heavy. The cost of removing and restoring it would be significant, so the current plan is to leave it in place, but hopefully to eventually make a three D rendering of it next. Archaeologists working off the coast of Capri, Italy, have found several pieces of worked obsidian that were probably used as trade materials. They are believed to have come from a lost Neolithic cargo vessel. They're incredibly old. There's no evidence of the wreck itself found so far, and honestly, at this point probably would not be. It is also possible that this may have come not from a cargo vessel, but from a Neolithic coastal settlement that was eventually submerged. Of course, no evidence of that settlement has been found either. And lastly, one of the artifacts that was recovered from the wreck of a cog in Estonian twenty twenty two has turned out to be the oldest functioning dry compass in Europe. We talked about the discovery of the cog On unearthed and at the time it wasn't clear what the reck's fate would be. It was excavated and the wreck was moved to the Estonian Maritime Museum. The compass is one of the items to have been found during the cleaning and conservation process. They have also found things like tools, weapons and shoes, and to finish up are unearthed. From twenty twenty three, we have two baths, both of them found under or something else. First, archaeologists in Bath, England have unearthed a cold bath, one that was documented in the historical record but had not been located yet. This was in a suite of three rooms under one end of the ballroom at Bath Assembly Rooms. Those rooms were completed in seventeen seventy one and then at some point after that the bath was covered over with a floor, so excavating this bath involved removing that floor and just a huge amount of rubble underneath it. When Bath came up on the show earlier in twenty twenty three, in our episodes on Dean Muhammet, we were talking mostly about steam baths and warm water baths, but cold baths and cold plunges were recommended. For people's health as well. Most of them were built at people's private homes or in public facilities devoted to bathing and wellness. This is the first cold bath known to have been built at an assembly room, and the other bath is a Roman bath found under the Split City Museum in Split, Croatia. The museum is housed in what was once a palace, and centuries before it had been the site of Diocletian's Palace, built for the Roman emperor Diocletian in the third century. Diocletian's Palace is still part of much of Split's old city core today. This bath featured mosaic floors with an underfloor heating system and a furnace, and there was also an oil and grape press. These baths were discovered during repairs that were part of a project called Palace of Life, City of Change, which is a development and restoration project for the central city and the site of Diocletian's Palace. The hope is to open at least part of the bath to the public once it's clear that the building structural integrity will make it safe to do so, and that is the end of our twenty twenty three I was going to say twenty twenty four, but that's where we are now, three on Earth, and I have just one little bit of listener mail. It is from Katie, and Katie said, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I have a lot of thoughts about your discussion of math in this week's Behind the Scenes, but none of them are about Tracy perpetuating gendered math stereotypes. I was an elementary school teacher for several years, and now I'm a mom, so I see what my kids are learning math wise. In college, I had to take a class about how math works meant for educators. Part of the class involved relearning basic operations in a base other than ten, so we were adding subtracting, multiplying, and dividing in base seven. The idea was that it would help us remember how difficult it can be for young kids to learn math. The math programs I used to teach and the ones my kids have been using all teach both customary and metric measures, but then it seems after the introduction they mostly stick with customary measures moving forward. Finally, the complaints of parents about the new math annoyed me as a tea and a parent, but over the years I've seen schools address it more. Some schools hold seminars for parents to teach them the methods their kids are learning. Some homework has examples at the top, and many math programs have an online video component that shows you how to do it. Of course, the easiest way to keep parents from complaining is just to get rid of homework, especially in elementary school where there isn't much evidence for its usefulness. Thanks for all your hard work on the podcast, Katie.

Next, the wreck of the SS Dix has been found in Puget Sound in Washington. The dis was working as a ferry, part of a collection of privately owned vessels known as the Mosquito Fleet that operated in the area for about a century. Obviously, there are still lots of ferries in the Seattle area, but this was before a lot of the roads and bridges that connect Farrious Islands were there. There were a lot more ferries operating. The Dix was taking passengers from Seattle to Bainbridge Island when it sank in nineteen oh six after colliding with the SS Genie. At least forty two passengers died, making one of Seattle's worst maritime disasters. This wreck was apparently found all the way back in twenty fifteen, but not announced until now. Experts working with the seventeenth century Swedish warship Vasa have said it urgently needs a new structural support system. The wreck was raised from the Baltic Sea in nineteen sixty one and it's been displayed at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm since nineteen ninety. But the existing steel cradle is putting uneven pressure on parts of the ship, and the ship itself is deteriorating due to the effects of pollution it absorbed from the water while it was still submerged. This is something the museum has been studying and working on for years, and now it has reached the point that it has to raise the funds to pay for it. The Vasa Museum is self funded and the estimated cost of a new support structure is one hundred and fifty million kroner. And we will close out our shipwrecks with a few items that came from Rex, not the themselves. A steamship called the Saint Lucy sank off the coast of Miami on October eighteenth, nineteen oh six, during a hurricane. That ship was eventually raised from the seafloor, repaired, and put back into use, but researchers announced the discovery of its anchor in November. Maritime archaeologist Joshua Morto had been showing two summer interns around Biscayne National Park when he noticed a sea turtle behaving strangely and then saw it sitting underneath this anchor. This is an anchor, so of course it is extremely heavy. The cost of removing and restoring it would be significant, so the current plan is to leave it in place, but hopefully to eventually make a three D rendering of it next. Archaeologists working off the coast of Capri, Italy, have found several pieces of worked obsidian that were probably used as trade materials. They are believed to have come from a lost Neolithic cargo vessel. They're incredibly old. There's no evidence of the wreck itself found so far, and honestly, at this point probably would not be. It is also possible that this may have come not from a cargo vessel, but from a Neolithic coastal settlement that was eventually submerged. Of course, no evidence of that settlement has been found either. And lastly, one of the artifacts that was recovered from the wreck of a cog in Estonian twenty twenty two has turned out to be the oldest functioning dry compass in Europe. We talked about the discovery of the cog On unearthed and at the time it wasn't clear what the reck's fate would be. It was excavated and the wreck was moved to the Estonian Maritime Museum. The compass is one of the items to have been found during the cleaning and conservation process. They have also found things like tools, weapons and shoes, and to finish up are unearthed. From twenty twenty three, we have two baths, both of them found under or something else. First, archaeologists in Bath, England have unearthed a cold bath, one that was documented in the historical record but had not been located yet. This was in a suite of three rooms under one end of the ballroom at Bath Assembly Rooms. Those rooms were completed in seventeen seventy one and then at some point after that the bath was covered over with a floor, so excavating this bath involved removing that floor and just a huge amount of rubble underneath it. When Bath came up on the show earlier in twenty twenty three, in our episodes on Dean Muhammet, we were talking mostly about steam baths and warm water baths, but cold baths and cold plunges were recommended. For people's health as well. Most of them were built at people's private homes or in public facilities devoted to bathing and wellness. This is the first cold bath known to have been built at an assembly room, and the other bath is a Roman bath found under the Split City Museum in Split, Croatia. The museum is housed in what was once a palace, and centuries before it had been the site of Diocletian's Palace, built for the Roman emperor Diocletian in the third century. Diocletian's Palace is still part of much of Split's old city core today. This bath featured mosaic floors with an underfloor heating system and a furnace, and there was also an oil and grape press. These baths were discovered during repairs that were part of a project called Palace of Life, City of Change, which is a development and restoration project for the central city and the site of Diocletian's Palace. The hope is to open at least part of the bath to the public once it's clear that the building structural integrity will make it safe to do so, and that is the end of our twenty twenty three I was going to say twenty twenty four, but that's where we are now, three on Earth, and I have just one little bit of listener mail. It is from Katie, and Katie said, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I have a lot of thoughts about your discussion of math in this week's Behind the Scenes, but none of them are about Tracy perpetuating gendered math stereotypes. I was an elementary school teacher for several years, and now I'm a mom, so I see what my kids are learning math wise. In college, I had to take a class about how math works meant for educators. Part of the class involved relearning basic operations in a base other than ten, so we were adding subtracting, multiplying, and dividing in base seven. The idea was that it would help us remember how difficult it can be for young kids to learn math. The math programs I used to teach and the ones my kids have been using all teach both customary and metric measures, but then it seems after the introduction they mostly stick with customary measures moving forward. Finally, the complaints of parents about the new math annoyed me as a tea and a parent, but over the years I've seen schools address it more. Some schools hold seminars for parents to teach them the methods their kids are learning. Some homework has examples at the top, and many math programs have an online video component that shows you how to do it. Of course, the easiest way to keep parents from complaining is just to get rid of homework, especially in elementary school where there isn't much evidence for its usefulness. Thanks for all your hard work on the podcast, Katie.

Ps.

Ps.

Here's our cat Stella in a moment where she wasn't knocking over our Christmas tree and our dog. Are you confused about the shirt he had to wear post lumpectomy? I love both of these pictures. What adorable dog and cat boy do? I love not having homework in elementary school. That was the age I got in the most trouble for not doing my homework because I thought it was a waste of my time. It is as as Katie said in this email, there's just an increasing body of evidence that like homework in elementary school does not help children learn more, and if anything, the only homework that should be happening is like class work that wasn't finished in class. Yeah, I mean I don't know. It's I'm not a teacher and I'm not a parent, but it seems like kids should get to be kids. Yeah, I was like great about my homework because I whipped that stuff out on the bus.

Here's our cat Stella in a moment where she wasn't knocking over our Christmas tree and our dog. Are you confused about the shirt he had to wear post lumpectomy? I love both of these pictures. What adorable dog and cat boy do? I love not having homework in elementary school. That was the age I got in the most trouble for not doing my homework because I thought it was a waste of my time. It is as as Katie said in this email, there's just an increasing body of evidence that like homework in elementary school does not help children learn more, and if anything, the only homework that should be happening is like class work that wasn't finished in class. Yeah, I mean I don't know. It's I'm not a teacher and I'm not a parent, but it seems like kids should get to be kids. Yeah, I was like great about my homework because I whipped that stuff out on the bus.

It never got opened in the house. Yeah.

It never got opened in the house. Yeah.

When I got to high school, I was big on the doing homework on the bus, which was only possible because I found a just a weird seating position where I was wedged into the bus seat that allowed me to do my homework on the bus without getting motion sick because if I try to read in the car, stint motion sickness. Bus doesn't move quite the same as a car. And I also just I found this really weird way to sit that's like supported my head on the back of the bus seat, and that is where I did overwhelmingly, especially math homework, always on the bus. So yeah, yeah, thank you so much for that email. If you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcasts, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.

When I got to high school, I was big on the doing homework on the bus, which was only possible because I found a just a weird seating position where I was wedged into the bus seat that allowed me to do my homework on the bus without getting motion sick because if I try to read in the car, stint motion sickness. Bus doesn't move quite the same as a car. And I also just I found this really weird way to sit that's like supported my head on the back of the bus seat, and that is where I did overwhelmingly, especially math homework, always on the bus. So yeah, yeah, thank you so much for that email. If you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcasts, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.

We're all over social media.

We're all over social media.

Missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you 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.

Missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you 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.