Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This is part two of our autumn installment of Unearthed. We have lots of many folks favorite things. Today we are going to kick off, as we so often do, with things that were interesting but hard to categorize. So I threw them together and called it potpourri. And Potpourri starts with controversy. In September, a paper called a tunguskas sized air burst destroyed Tall el ha Mom, a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea, that was published in the journal Scientific Reports. This paper makes the case that a cosmic air burst caused by a comment or meteorite destroyed the city around sixteen fifty BC. It also notes debate about whether Tall el ham Mom may have been the biblical city of Sodom, and the papers authors considered whether the Biblical account of the destruction of the city of Sodom may have come from oral traditions about the destruction of Tall el Hammam. So this paper argues that this was a massive incredibly destructive high temperature event, shattering the bones of the people who were killed, melting pottery and mud bricks, and creating a destruction layer really rich in charcoal in the archaeological record. There have been multiple Twitter threads by physicists, bioarchaeologists, and other experts questioning or criticizing various aspects of this paper, like that there really wasn't a lot of bone used in the research, and that the researchers were not sure whether the bones that were studied were human or animal, or that the way the mud brick had fragmented is really typical in other excavations of similar structures are not suggested to have been destroyed in a massive air blast, or that pottery being intermingled with mud brick isn't evidence that pottery was violently blasted into the walls. Pottery pieces were commonly used to help bind the brick. There's really a lot going on here, and some of the people involved with writing this paper definitely do believe that tal el Hamm is the biblical city of Sodom, while a lot of the papers critics definitely do not like. People were definitely coming from a perspective in both the paper and the criticism, and some of the critics have also concluded that this paper was written specifically to support the idea that tal el hamm was the city of Sodom, rather than drawing conclusions based on where the evidence actually lad. There has even been criticism of this paper from Biblical scholars and archaeologists who focus specifically on the Bible, because if tal el Hammam really was destroyed in an air blast that happened as many as four hundred years after the destruction of the city of Sodom is supposed to have happened. Uh. This paper made a whole lot of headlines, and then I kept finding more and more Twitter threads from people who were like, Nah, it's honestly a level of uh like criticism that I have more often seen associated with like a television show that's purportedly about archaeology, rather than about a paper published in a peer reviewed journal. Trauma that should actually be the television show, is the argument among experts. Moving on, archaeologists in Gloucestershire, working ahead of a new development, have unearthed a number of objects, many of them dating back to Roman times, including a statuette believed to depict the goddess Venus. This piece is small, it's just about seventeen centimeters tall and it's made of pipe clay and it's in very good condition. It was most likely worshiped as a religious icon, possibly at someone's home altar. Other finds at the area include the foundations of Roman era buildings. Archaeologists in the Orkney Archipelago have unearthed two stone balls, each of them about the size of a cricket ball, from a tomb there. This tomb dates back to about thirty b C and it's currently being lost to erosion and sea level rise. Earlier excavations were carried out in the surrounding area back in the nineteen eighties, but archaeologists have gone back to try to find as much as they can before this whole area is underwater. About five hundred similar balls have been discovered in Scotland and they seem to be unique to Scotland. Although there are several possibilities for how they were used, the most common is that they were throwing weapons. In terms of these two specific balls, one is intact, spherical and polished and the other has split. Moving on, when Europeans started arriving in North America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They of course brought lots of European goods with them. They brought their own supplies as well as trade goods and gifts, but for the most part, these goods were not evenly dispersed through the indigenous communities that Europeans came into contact with. Especially at first, Europeans tended to give them to or trade them with people they saw as being more elite. So today archaeologists tend to find smaller numbers of European goods kind of clustered together in context that are associated with indigenous people of higher status, or at least indigenous people that Europeans would have interpreted as being of a higher status. That's not always the case, though. Researchers in Mississippi have found a trove of more than eighty middle objects that likely date back to Hernando de Soto's expedition through what is now the southeastern United States in the sixteenth century. In early fifteen forty one, De Soto demanded that the Chickasaw Nation provide him with hundreds of porters to help carry his expedition supplies. He also demanded they supply him with women. This followed months of escalating tensions between De Soto's expedition and the Chickasaw nation, including De Soto's execution of two Chickasaw people. So on March fourth, fifty one, Chickasaw archers attacked De Soto's encampment. De Soto retreated and regrouped, but the Chickasaw attacked a second time, ultimately driving De Soto out of the area entirely in spite of the Chickasaw being heavily outnumbered. As de Soto's force fled, they left behind all kinds of supplies, including metal chains that De Soto had brought to shackle indigenous people with, including captives and people that the Spanish enslaved. There were also objects like axe heads, nails, and blades which the Chickasaw recovered from the battlefield and repurposed for their own use, including reshaping metal objects and tools to more closely resemble their Chickasaw made counterparts. Those were often made of bone, stone, or cane. In the words of lead author Charles Cobb, quote, one of the most stunning things we found is an exact iron replica of a Native American stone selt or axe head. I've never seen anything like this in the Southeast before the US government removed the Chickasaw Nation from its traditional homeland to what's now Oklahoma in eighteen thirty seven. This find was part of archaeological work that started in Mississippi and twif at a site called Stark Farms, and the research was co funded by the Chickasaw Nation and it's Chickasaw Explorers Program. Field work at Stark Farms was initially started in part to provide an archaeology field work program for Chickasaw University students. The objects that were described in this paper, which was published in the journal American Antiquity in July, are being repatriated to the Chickasaw Nation. All right, let's move on to some more repatriations. In September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it would be returning a tenth century religious sculpture depicting Lord Shiva to Nepal. Researchers at the ment realized there were some holes in the sculptures providence and concluded that it had probably been stolen from Nepal about fifty years ago. A collection of sixteenth century manuscripts is being returned to Mexico from the United States after researchers in Mexico noticed a pattern of colonial era documents being offered up for sale at US auction houses. Of Mexican authorities started an investigation after seeing this pattern. These documents were stolen from Mexico's national archive, possibly in a a stematic series of thefts. An investigation and repatriation process was a joint effort involving the Mexican government, the U. S. Attorney's Office in New York, and homeland security investigations. There was a formal repatriation ceremony for these documents in September. A pair of eighteenth century church doors was repatriated from Japan to Cyprus in September. The panel doors featured paintings of saints and religious scenes, and they were looted after Turkey invaded Cyprus in nineteen seventy four. Legal efforts to have the doors returned had started in the nineteen nineties, but at first Japanese authorities maintained that they had been bought in good faith and in our last repatriation before we take a quick break, the Brooklyn Museum is repatriating more than thirteen hundred pre Columbian artifacts to Costa Rica. These have been part of a collection belonging to railroad magnate Minor Keith, who owned banana plantations in Costa Rica. When workers on the plantations found artifacts, Keith just kept them. The museum bought some of the collection. In another part of the collection was given to the museum as a gift. Some of these repatriated objects are more than two thousand years old. And now we'll pause for a quick sponsor break. Next up, we have a couple of things that aren't exactly discoveries, but they are papers that have come out over the last few months, and they relate to how researchers approached the kind of work that we talked about on these episodes and the language that we used to talk about it. We've talked about discoveries made through remote sensing and noninvasive imaging technologies quite a few times, especially in the more recent installments of An Earth. This can be a particularly useful method because it allows researchers to get a sense of what's under the ground or to get a clearer picture of the landscape without actually disturbing the area. But we haven't really talked about the ethics of this kind of work, and that's something that's discussed in a paper that was published in the journal Archaeological Perspection in July. Basically, while it's true that things like drone photography, satellite imagery, and light detection and ranging or light are those are all considered non invasive, using them doesn't eliminate the need for researchers to approach their work and the communities that they're studying in a respectful and ethical way. In the words of Penn State doctoral student Dylan Davis, quote, remote sensing is a tool, and it can be used for great things, or it can be used in ways that are extremely harmful. If you do not communicate what you are trying to do with these technologies with local communities, especially indigenous communities who may have been there for hundreds or thousands of years, the research you put together could tell a narrative that implicates them in something they're not responsible for. The papers authors also note that the use of remote sensing doesn't absolve researchers of the need to get permission from indigenous communities to study their sacred spaces, even if they're not physically entering those spaces. Researchers using these technologies should also be aware of how their research could impact communities who are living in or connected to the spaces that are being studied through remote imaging and for the other paper. Something else that we've talked about in several previous episodes of the show is that race is socially constructed. Race and racism have had and continue to have real and dramatic effects on the world and on people's lives, but they're not actually based on biology. That can make it difficult to talk about research in a precise and accurate way, especially when that research is on the physical remains of people whose identities we don't necessarily know. In some cases, researchers have tried to frame their work in terms of people's places of origin rather than racial categories. So, as a hypothetical example, a researcher describing remains that were found in a burial site might say that they were people of African descent rather than saying that they were black, in an effort to be more precise, but this may not be accurate either. Research published in the journal Biology examined the papers that were published in the journal of forensic sciences between two thousand nine and twenty nineteen. So the focus here was on forensic anthropology, but the same concepts exist in other fields as well. Researchers evaluated papers that referenced things like ancestry and race to see if their authors were using their terminology consistently, and they weren't. In the words of lead author and Ross, quote, inconsistent term anology opens the door to confusion, misunderstanding, and misuse within the discipline. And the teape also found that researchers descriptions of remains as having an African, European or Asian origin also were not always correct, and in some cases these places of origin were basically being used as synonyms for race, rather than actually correctly saying where a person had come from. There aren't necessarily any easy answers here, not within a field like forensic anthropology, or even within something like our podcast, which is meant for a general audience made up of people from a variety of backgrounds. In the paper itself, the authors conclude, quote, we need a fundamental, structural and thoughtful shift in our paradigm, beginning with hypotheses driven by meaningful questions and careful selection of informative characters for investigation. We need a return or rather beginning to investigating real human biological variation. Next up, we have a couple of exhimations to talk about. The body of Father Patrick Ryan was exhumed in July. Father Ryan was a Catholic priest who died in eighteen seventy eight after contracting yellow fever while caring for people during a yellow fever epidemic. Once his coffin was opened, officials detected the presence of arsenic, which was used pretty often an embalming fluid at the time. Hazardous materials specialists had to be brought in to transfer the remains to a newly built casket. A processional carried the casket to the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Chattanooga, where it was re entombed. Father Ryan has been given the title Servant of God and his work is being investigated and researched. In the process of his possibly being named a saint and our other exhimation this time around, Historians, history enthusiasts and others in Ireland have called for the body of Irish Republican leader Michael Collins to be exhumed. Collins was shot and killed in August of nineteen two when the convoy he was traveling in was ambushed. It's generally known that his assailants opposed the Anglo Irish Treaty of December ninety one, which Collins had helped negotiate, but beyond that there was no formal inquiry, so very little is known about exactly what happened or who actually pulled the trigger. Advocates for exuming his remains hope that it would yield some new information about his death. All right, lots of favorites here in Shipwrecked time last year we talked about a seventeenth century flout discovered in the Gulf of Finland. Divers had found this wreck while looking for ships from World War One and World War Two based on markings on its transom, which were a picture of a swan and a year. This flout has now been identified as the Swan built in sixteen thirty six. Divers also took measurements and photos to make a photogrametric three D model of the wreck, and they're hoping to use all of this information to track down more about the ship. In the written record, a shipwreck in the Southern Irish Sea, previously believed to be a submarine, has been identified as the HMS Mercury, which was a mine sweeper during World War Two that had originally been a ferry and it sank in nineteen forty after being damaged one of the minds that it was trying to clear exploded. The mine had gotten caught in the vessel sweeping gear and exploded underneath the vessel. This work was carried out by maritime archaeologists at Bournemouth University and scientists at Bangor University School of Ocean Sciences. It's part of ongoing work to try to identify hundreds of rex in the Irish Sea. Archaeologists working in the Adriatic Sea have confirmed that a shipwreck discovered there a few years ago is both the oldest and the best preserved ship in the area, and it's a somewhat surprising find as well. It's in water that is only about two and a half meters deep, but it was not spotted until just a few years ago. Slovenian archaeologist Milan Eric found it by accidents while anchoring a boat in Croatia and research started on it back in This is a wooden merchant vessel that dates back to about the second century BC. Research on the vessel required the team to dam off the surrounding area because the sand the vessel was resting in was so loose that it kept refilming behind them as they were trying to dig it out. Once excavation and conservation are complete, the wreck is planned to be housed in the Loan Museum and our last shipwreck. Authorities in Finland have retrieved a carved wooden lion's head from a shipwreck on the seafloor. This is pretty unusual and Finland shipwrecks are protected. Normally, artifacts are documented through photography and measurements are taken, but otherwise everything stays underwater, sort of similar to that first shipwreck that we talked about, the seventeenth century Flout, but in this case, the lion's face had fallen off the beam that would have been used to operate the ship's anchors. This beam was called a cathead because it was often decorated with the face of some kind of cat. This face had been attached back in two thousand five when divers visited the site, but when they went back this year it had fallen off, and so the decision was made to bring it up. All right, Now we're going to move on to some other things that are sunken or just otherwise underwater, but for the most part these are not shipwrecks. So first up, underwater teams have been working at the sunken city of Toni's Heracleon. The city was initially built on the Nile Delta about twenty seven hundred years ago, on small pieces of land connected by bridges and ferries. At one point, it was Egypt's largest port, but it eventually sank due to a combination of factors including earthquakes, tidal ways, and liquid faction of the land that it was resting on. Parts of the city disappeared around the second century BEAST and then the rest around the eighth century C. The remains of the city were discovered around the year two thousand, and At this point, only about three percent of the area has been explored. Recent finds at the site include a military vessel which apparently sank while being loaded with huge stone blocks in the second century b c. E Divers also found wicker baskets filled with fruits, particularly with doom, which is a fruit of an African palm tree. These baskets appear to date back to the fourth century b c e. And they may have been part of a funerary offering. The baskets were found in the same general area as a large burial mound that was also home to Greek funerary offerings. A Roman road was found submerged in part of the Venice Lagoon known as Traporti Channel. This doesn't just illustrate one of the areas of the lagoon that used to be accessible by land, it also suggests that there were Roman settlements in the area centuries before the city of Ennis was established. This research was conducted using sonar and they found evidence of twelve structures that would have been aligned along this road. One of the structures may have been a dock, suggesting that this road was situated on a sandy ridge that lay at the time along the lagoon, but now it's under it. Researchers from the University of Burn have dated underwater piles in Lake Orid in the Balkans, believed to be the oldest lake in Europe. This research involved the underwater remnants of about eight hundred piles, which would have supported the houses and other structures built on the lake. These piles are exceptionally well preserved thanks to the lack of oxygen at the bottom of the lake, and the oldest date back to the middle of the fifth millennium BC, but this site seems to have been used for thousands of years, with settlements essentially being built on top of one another. The remains of these pile dwellings are the only ones from the Neolithic period in this region to be so well preserved, and research done in the area suggests that this was home to Europe's first farmers. Let's take a real quick sponsor break before we move on to some royal residences. Like I said before the break, we've got a couple of fines now that are related to royal residences. First, the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Japan has excavated a ruin from the Hejokio Palace that they believed to have been the residence of Emperor cocin So, the female emperor who ruled in the eighth century. They unearthed the footprints of a rectangular structure that was dotted with about fifty pits. These pits would have held the pillars that supported the structure. They believe that this structure was in use for about twenty years and a team from the Royal Agricultural University and Wessex Archaeology have found an Early English cave house dating back to about the ninth century. The cave is cut from sandstone with windows and supporting pillars, and there's some speculation that it belonged to King Ardwolf, who ruled Northumbria until eight oh six and was later canonized as St. Rdulf. He was buried not far away from the cave house after his death. Moving on to some books and documents, in ten Michael Richardson from the University of Bristol's Special Collections Library found seven parchment pieces from a very old manuscript telling the story of Merlin the Magician. These had been used as binding materials for four other volumes that were published around the turn of the sixteenth century. It's not clear exactly why these fragments were used as binding material, but it was incredibly commend to repurpose parchment and paper from books and other materials once they were considered old or obsolete or otherwise no longer needed, reduced, reused, recycle uh. These fragments are from an early thirteenth century Old French sequence known as the Vulga Cycle or the Lancelot g Reel cycle, and it's possible that they were one of the inspirations for Sir Thomas Mallory's Lemore d'artur. It's also possible that Mallory's work is what led to these pieces of parchment being thought of as better suited for the scrap pile than for reading. Anymore, they may have been seen as more or less obsolete in light of Mallory's work being available. These fragments were dated to the early hundreds, and the text itself was probably written between twelve twenty and twelve twenty five, so this is one of the earliest known copies of this text. In July, an English translation of this material was published as The Bristol Merlin Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment. In addition to the translation, this book includes full color images of the seven parchment fragments. According to researchers at Yale University, a map known as the Vinland Map, which is supposedly a fifteenth century map detailing the northeastern coast of North America, it's really a twentieth century fake. Yale first announced the discovery of the map in nineteen sixty five, and from there people started pointing to it as evidence that the Norse arrived in North America well before Christopher Columbus's two voyage. There were definitely Norse settlements on what's now Newfoundland that predated Columbus's voyage, so the maps in authenticity does not undo all of that. It also appears that this map was intentionally created to be deceptive. It was made from pages that were repurposed from a fifteenth century volume called the Speculum Historiale and had a Latin inscription on the back written over book binders and stractions about how to bind that volume. This overwritten note contained some instructions for binding the map into the Speculum Historiale. It's likely that the forged map was drawn on the Speculum Historiale's blank in sheets, and then those were removed and bound into another volume that was a copy of the Tartar Relation. Both of these volumes were ultimately in the Yale collection, and researchers had access to both of them for as long as they needed to do this research. There were already questions about the maps authenticity Before this point, and earlier research had suggested that modern inks were present in at least some parts of the map, but this research examined all of the inc used on the map, finding that it contained a form of titanium dioxide that was not used commercially until the nineteen twenties. They didn't find evidence of the substances that would have been in fifteen century inks like iron, sulfur or copper, and last up in the documents and books. A signer's copy of the Declaration of Independence, which was found in an attic in Scotland, was sold at auction in July, with the buyer paying more than four million dollars for it. This copy had originally been presented to signer Charles Carroll, and from there it was passed down through family in Scotland before being found by Edinburgh based auctioneers Lion in Turnbull. This is one of two hundred and one copies that were commissioned by John Quincy Adams, who at the time was Secretary of State, and printed by William Stone, with only forty eight of them known to still exist today. It is the last copy known to be in private hands. The buyer was the family of George E. Norcross, the Third, who planned to preserve the document before putting it on display at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. Next up, we have three different fines, all of which are trees that they are three completely different types of trees. First, research into the family tree of Leonardo da Vinci has traced twenty one generations of the family, including five family branches and fourteen living descendants. The tree begins with Leonardo's ancestor, Michelle, born in thirteen thirty one, and traces the family's lineage through nearly seven hundred years. This work has been going on for the last decade. This research contributes to an affiliated project, the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project, which is an international project with a goal of determining whether remains reported to be Leonardo's really are his. This work could also help confirm whether artwork attributed to Leonardo really was his creation by evaluating any DNA the artist left behind while working on it. And our second tree, an excavation in China's Sichuan Province has unearthed a shoe culture sacred tree made of bronze. This tree is truly a shin dating back to the eleventh or twelfth century BC, and it's also really really intricate. There are flowers, fruits, and a solar wheel ornament branching off of a trunk that is held up by a three legged base. It is so large and complex, and there were so many other ivory artifacts and other items in the same area that it took four months to fully excavate it. At some point experts will probably try to reassemble it, but right now the priority is excavating the other sacrificial pits that are part of this complex. There have also been other bronze sacred trees excavated from these pits, and it is possible that they all belong to one connected piece and our third tree find Researchers at the Tree Ring Laboratory at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory are studying the United States old growth forests by examining the joists and beams that were cut from those old growth for pists and used to build New York City. In this case, they're the ones that were used to build Terminal Warehouse in Chelsea in eight one, which were removed during renovations in twenty nineteen. This work has been spearheaded by Edward Cook, head of the Tree Ring Lab, whose other research included studying the timber used to make old houses and a wooden sloop. The timbers they found at Terminal Warehouse include long leaf pine that was at least one fifty years old when it was cut, with most of the trees having been cut down in eight when the warehouse was built, or not long before then. The oldest of the trees had sprouted all the way back in fifteen twelve, and most of them had started growing sometime in the early seventeenth to mid eighteenth century. The team compared these timbers to previous research into long leaf pines they're growing today, including stands in the southeastern United States, and they found that the likely source for these specific timbers was eastern Alabama, not far from the Georgia border, maybe even into Georgia. Of course, the oldest would frame buildings in New York used timber that was way closer to New York, but by the nineteenth century most of those forests had been cut down and New York builders were using wood that came from a lot farther south. They might have even figured out exactly where this lumber came from, suggesting that sample lumber company near Holland's, Alabama was a candidate. Alright, we're ending this installment of uneartht on the edibles and potables. First to find near Newport, Pembrokeshire suggests that people in Wales we're farming dairy as long ago as thirty one b c e. Decorated pieces of pottery found there contain residues of dairy fat, possibly buttered or cheese, but researchers suggested the most likely source is yogurt. This is the earliest evidence of dairy farming in Wales. I find this next one both fascinating and kind of gross. Researchers in Denmark have analyzed the gut contents of a bog body known as Tall and Man. They found barley, porridge, flax seeds, and a small amount of fish which had been cooked in a clay pot to the point of being slightly burned. I feel kind of and unless this was you know, what folks actually liked eating, I feel kind of sad that Tall and Man's last meal was kind of burned. The team, though, so that these gut contents were so well preserved that they could probably recreate the recipe for this meal if they wanted. Isotope studies into the remains of people who died in the seaside town of Herculaneum when Vesuvius erupted in sevent have added more detail to what researchers already knew about their diets. Earlier archaeological work had uncovered evidence of fish, shellfish, olives, cherries, peaches, lentils, and beans, but these isotopic studies suggested that nearly a quarter of the protein in these people's diets came from fish. That's about three times more than the typical diet of people living in the area today, and more than ten percent of their calories came from olive oil. That lined up with previous estimates that Romans diets contained about twenty liters of olive oil annually. Some of the news coverage of this research made me laugh really hard, because instead of framing it like what we just said, it was more like, Uh, people in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum ate a lot of fish in olive oil. And I was like, no, really, really, are you telling me people on a coastal town in a place that is known for its olives, or eating fish and olive oil. What uh any the reasons was a lot more specific and interesting than that, And also there was some suggestion that people diets varied according to their gender, with men generally eating more cereals and seafood than women did. This was not universally true among every single set of remains that they studied, and it's also not clear exactly what might have led to this difference. It could have been something as simple as men being more directly involved in fishing and eating some of their catch to sustain themselves while they were at it. Moving on to a potable researchers in China have found evidence of some of the earliest known beer consumption, probably done as part of rituals to honor the dead. This came from a study of nine thousand year old pots from a mound that contained two human skeletons, as well as pits containing pottery vessels. Some of the vessels were painted and may also be some of the earliest known painted pottery in the world. Seven of the vessels found at the site were long necked pots that were known to be used to drink alcohol in later eras. So to confirm that these earlier pots were also used for the same purpose, researchers tested the residues inside them. They found starches, molds, and yeast which lined up with residues from fermenting beer. In this case, the beer was probably made from fermenting rice, grain and tours. And for our last food find and our last find for this installment of Unearthed, remember that Thermapoleon we talked about last year, that hot food Kiosk and Pompeii that was decorated with pictures of mallards, a rooster and a dog and a dog that I was worried about, but everybody said it was okay. Well, it opened to the public for viewing in August, so we can all go see the dog and know that he was protecting the food. Yes, once international travel is a little safer than it seems to be right now. Uh So that's our Unearthed for October. We'll be back with some more of this. I am anticipating that the Year and Unearthed will probably not be the very very first two episodes in January, just because of how at this moment it looks like our year end time off is going to fall, so same thing happened. I feel like this year probably happened again. So do not fret if the very first episode of January is not unearthed and you're really looking forward to it, it will be along there coming it is uh. And I have an email from Lizzie uh. And this is another email about Alistair Crowley. Uh. Lizzie wrote to say, hello, my dear historians, always delighted to have a new episode. And I had my finger on the trigger to write you over bodium, but then you went even more local to me. And this is something I know from local lore. Mr Alistair Crowley is said to have cursed our dear town of Hastings. I believe he was educated here for a while, and this might have even been where he was ill as a child. In any case, just to go with the way it's told, and not to site sources or look anything up, just to serve up oral history folklore to you direct from Hastings. He left, traveled all over the world, had all of his hedonistic adventures and wizard battles and what have you, only to end up back in dear old Hastings, an old and sick man. When he died here he declared something to the effect of once you stay in Hastings, you die there. I interpret it as something more akin to talking about his own condition, But he was so frightening to people. I can imagine talking of this curse could easily go from talking about himself feeling cursed, maybe as a result of one of those magic battles. Who knows or what have you too. It's seeming to be a declaration on the town itself. The town is really lovely, and I can imagine people would return here to live in retirement, so who knows. I certainly haven't escaped it yet. The sad thing is there was a pub on the site of the home he died in, but it was recently demolished and leave a small gatehouse building remains and maybe the side of his death, and the pub was in the main house, set further back from the road, and just enjoyed the notoriety for its marketing. I've heard a lot of accounts of it, and despite being something of a folklore scholar and really enjoying digging into the history of other places and stories, this one is so close to home, as in my roots to and from places I will literally go past that building very regularly. I rather enjoy keeping it all a mystery and living in this folkloric moment. Anyway, I thought this might give you a smile to the people of Hastings still talk about his curse regularly, and his memory very much lives on here. Lizzie, I love this story. I would also probably be reluctant to go try to dig up whether a particular piece of local lore was really a true thing or not. Uh if you would like to write to us about this or any other podcast where History podcast i heart radio dot com. We're also all over social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio app and wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This is part two of our autumn installment of Unearthed. We have lots of many folks favorite things. Today we are going to kick off, as we so often do, with things that were interesting but hard to categorize. So I threw them together and called it potpourri. And Potpourri starts with controversy. In September, a paper called a tunguskas sized air burst destroyed Tall el ha Mom, a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea, that was published in the journal Scientific Reports. This paper makes the case that a cosmic air burst caused by a comment or meteorite destroyed the city around sixteen fifty BC. It also notes debate about whether Tall el ham Mom may have been the biblical city of Sodom, and the papers authors considered whether the Biblical account of the destruction of the city of Sodom may have come from oral traditions about the destruction of Tall el Hammam. So this paper argues that this was a massive incredibly destructive high temperature event, shattering the bones of the people who were killed, melting pottery and mud bricks, and creating a destruction layer really rich in charcoal in the archaeological record. There have been multiple Twitter threads by physicists, bioarchaeologists, and other experts questioning or criticizing various aspects of this paper, like that there really wasn't a lot of bone used in the research, and that the researchers were not sure whether the bones that were studied were human or animal, or that the way the mud brick had fragmented is really typical in other excavations of similar structures are not suggested to have been destroyed in a massive air blast, or that pottery being intermingled with mud brick isn't evidence that pottery was violently blasted into the walls. Pottery pieces were commonly used to help bind the brick. There's really a lot going on here, and some of the people involved with writing this paper definitely do believe that tal el Hamm is the biblical city of Sodom, while a lot of the papers critics definitely do not like. People were definitely coming from a perspective in both the paper and the criticism, and some of the critics have also concluded that this paper was written specifically to support the idea that tal el hamm was the city of Sodom, rather than drawing conclusions based on where the evidence actually lad. There has even been criticism of this paper from Biblical scholars and archaeologists who focus specifically on the Bible, because if tal el Hammam really was destroyed in an air blast that happened as many as four hundred years after the destruction of the city of Sodom is supposed to have happened. Uh. This paper made a whole lot of headlines, and then I kept finding more and more Twitter threads from people who were like, Nah, it's honestly a level of uh like criticism that I have more often seen associated with like a television show that's purportedly about archaeology, rather than about a paper published in a peer reviewed journal. Trauma that should actually be the television show, is the argument among experts. Moving on, archaeologists in Gloucestershire, working ahead of a new development, have unearthed a number of objects, many of them dating back to Roman times, including a statuette believed to depict the goddess Venus. This piece is small, it's just about seventeen centimeters tall and it's made of pipe clay and it's in very good condition. It was most likely worshiped as a religious icon, possibly at someone's home altar. Other finds at the area include the foundations of Roman era buildings. Archaeologists in the Orkney Archipelago have unearthed two stone balls, each of them about the size of a cricket ball, from a tomb there. This tomb dates back to about thirty b C and it's currently being lost to erosion and sea level rise. Earlier excavations were carried out in the surrounding area back in the nineteen eighties, but archaeologists have gone back to try to find as much as they can before this whole area is underwater. About five hundred similar balls have been discovered in Scotland and they seem to be unique to Scotland. Although there are several possibilities for how they were used, the most common is that they were throwing weapons. In terms of these two specific balls, one is intact, spherical and polished and the other has split. Moving on, when Europeans started arriving in North America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They of course brought lots of European goods with them. They brought their own supplies as well as trade goods and gifts, but for the most part, these goods were not evenly dispersed through the indigenous communities that Europeans came into contact with. Especially at first, Europeans tended to give them to or trade them with people they saw as being more elite. So today archaeologists tend to find smaller numbers of European goods kind of clustered together in context that are associated with indigenous people of higher status, or at least indigenous people that Europeans would have interpreted as being of a higher status. That's not always the case, though. Researchers in Mississippi have found a trove of more than eighty middle objects that likely date back to Hernando de Soto's expedition through what is now the southeastern United States in the sixteenth century. In early fifteen forty one, De Soto demanded that the Chickasaw Nation provide him with hundreds of porters to help carry his expedition supplies. He also demanded they supply him with women. This followed months of escalating tensions between De Soto's expedition and the Chickasaw nation, including De Soto's execution of two Chickasaw people. So on March fourth, fifty one, Chickasaw archers attacked De Soto's encampment. De Soto retreated and regrouped, but the Chickasaw attacked a second time, ultimately driving De Soto out of the area entirely in spite of the Chickasaw being heavily outnumbered. As de Soto's force fled, they left behind all kinds of supplies, including metal chains that De Soto had brought to shackle indigenous people with, including captives and people that the Spanish enslaved. There were also objects like axe heads, nails, and blades which the Chickasaw recovered from the battlefield and repurposed for their own use, including reshaping metal objects and tools to more closely resemble their Chickasaw made counterparts. Those were often made of bone, stone, or cane. In the words of lead author Charles Cobb, quote, one of the most stunning things we found is an exact iron replica of a Native American stone selt or axe head. I've never seen anything like this in the Southeast before the US government removed the Chickasaw Nation from its traditional homeland to what's now Oklahoma in eighteen thirty seven. This find was part of archaeological work that started in Mississippi and twif at a site called Stark Farms, and the research was co funded by the Chickasaw Nation and it's Chickasaw Explorers Program. Field work at Stark Farms was initially started in part to provide an archaeology field work program for Chickasaw University students. The objects that were described in this paper, which was published in the journal American Antiquity in July, are being repatriated to the Chickasaw Nation. All right, let's move on to some more repatriations. In September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it would be returning a tenth century religious sculpture depicting Lord Shiva to Nepal. Researchers at the ment realized there were some holes in the sculptures providence and concluded that it had probably been stolen from Nepal about fifty years ago. A collection of sixteenth century manuscripts is being returned to Mexico from the United States after researchers in Mexico noticed a pattern of colonial era documents being offered up for sale at US auction houses. Of Mexican authorities started an investigation after seeing this pattern. These documents were stolen from Mexico's national archive, possibly in a a stematic series of thefts. An investigation and repatriation process was a joint effort involving the Mexican government, the U. S. Attorney's Office in New York, and homeland security investigations. There was a formal repatriation ceremony for these documents in September. A pair of eighteenth century church doors was repatriated from Japan to Cyprus in September. The panel doors featured paintings of saints and religious scenes, and they were looted after Turkey invaded Cyprus in nineteen seventy four. Legal efforts to have the doors returned had started in the nineteen nineties, but at first Japanese authorities maintained that they had been bought in good faith and in our last repatriation before we take a quick break, the Brooklyn Museum is repatriating more than thirteen hundred pre Columbian artifacts to Costa Rica. These have been part of a collection belonging to railroad magnate Minor Keith, who owned banana plantations in Costa Rica. When workers on the plantations found artifacts, Keith just kept them. The museum bought some of the collection. In another part of the collection was given to the museum as a gift. Some of these repatriated objects are more than two thousand years old. And now we'll pause for a quick sponsor break. Next up, we have a couple of things that aren't exactly discoveries, but they are papers that have come out over the last few months, and they relate to how researchers approached the kind of work that we talked about on these episodes and the language that we used to talk about it. We've talked about discoveries made through remote sensing and noninvasive imaging technologies quite a few times, especially in the more recent installments of An Earth. This can be a particularly useful method because it allows researchers to get a sense of what's under the ground or to get a clearer picture of the landscape without actually disturbing the area. But we haven't really talked about the ethics of this kind of work, and that's something that's discussed in a paper that was published in the journal Archaeological Perspection in July. Basically, while it's true that things like drone photography, satellite imagery, and light detection and ranging or light are those are all considered non invasive, using them doesn't eliminate the need for researchers to approach their work and the communities that they're studying in a respectful and ethical way. In the words of Penn State doctoral student Dylan Davis, quote, remote sensing is a tool, and it can be used for great things, or it can be used in ways that are extremely harmful. If you do not communicate what you are trying to do with these technologies with local communities, especially indigenous communities who may have been there for hundreds or thousands of years, the research you put together could tell a narrative that implicates them in something they're not responsible for. The papers authors also note that the use of remote sensing doesn't absolve researchers of the need to get permission from indigenous communities to study their sacred spaces, even if they're not physically entering those spaces. Researchers using these technologies should also be aware of how their research could impact communities who are living in or connected to the spaces that are being studied through remote imaging and for the other paper. Something else that we've talked about in several previous episodes of the show is that race is socially constructed. Race and racism have had and continue to have real and dramatic effects on the world and on people's lives, but they're not actually based on biology. That can make it difficult to talk about research in a precise and accurate way, especially when that research is on the physical remains of people whose identities we don't necessarily know. In some cases, researchers have tried to frame their work in terms of people's places of origin rather than racial categories. So, as a hypothetical example, a researcher describing remains that were found in a burial site might say that they were people of African descent rather than saying that they were black, in an effort to be more precise, but this may not be accurate either. Research published in the journal Biology examined the papers that were published in the journal of forensic sciences between two thousand nine and twenty nineteen. So the focus here was on forensic anthropology, but the same concepts exist in other fields as well. Researchers evaluated papers that referenced things like ancestry and race to see if their authors were using their terminology consistently, and they weren't. In the words of lead author and Ross, quote, inconsistent term anology opens the door to confusion, misunderstanding, and misuse within the discipline. And the teape also found that researchers descriptions of remains as having an African, European or Asian origin also were not always correct, and in some cases these places of origin were basically being used as synonyms for race, rather than actually correctly saying where a person had come from. There aren't necessarily any easy answers here, not within a field like forensic anthropology, or even within something like our podcast, which is meant for a general audience made up of people from a variety of backgrounds. In the paper itself, the authors conclude, quote, we need a fundamental, structural and thoughtful shift in our paradigm, beginning with hypotheses driven by meaningful questions and careful selection of informative characters for investigation. We need a return or rather beginning to investigating real human biological variation. Next up, we have a couple of exhimations to talk about. The body of Father Patrick Ryan was exhumed in July. Father Ryan was a Catholic priest who died in eighteen seventy eight after contracting yellow fever while caring for people during a yellow fever epidemic. Once his coffin was opened, officials detected the presence of arsenic, which was used pretty often an embalming fluid at the time. Hazardous materials specialists had to be brought in to transfer the remains to a newly built casket. A processional carried the casket to the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Chattanooga, where it was re entombed. Father Ryan has been given the title Servant of God and his work is being investigated and researched. In the process of his possibly being named a saint and our other exhimation this time around, Historians, history enthusiasts and others in Ireland have called for the body of Irish Republican leader Michael Collins to be exhumed. Collins was shot and killed in August of nineteen two when the convoy he was traveling in was ambushed. It's generally known that his assailants opposed the Anglo Irish Treaty of December ninety one, which Collins had helped negotiate, but beyond that there was no formal inquiry, so very little is known about exactly what happened or who actually pulled the trigger. Advocates for exuming his remains hope that it would yield some new information about his death. All right, lots of favorites here in Shipwrecked time last year we talked about a seventeenth century flout discovered in the Gulf of Finland. Divers had found this wreck while looking for ships from World War One and World War Two based on markings on its transom, which were a picture of a swan and a year. This flout has now been identified as the Swan built in sixteen thirty six. Divers also took measurements and photos to make a photogrametric three D model of the wreck, and they're hoping to use all of this information to track down more about the ship. In the written record, a shipwreck in the Southern Irish Sea, previously believed to be a submarine, has been identified as the HMS Mercury, which was a mine sweeper during World War Two that had originally been a ferry and it sank in nineteen forty after being damaged one of the minds that it was trying to clear exploded. The mine had gotten caught in the vessel sweeping gear and exploded underneath the vessel. This work was carried out by maritime archaeologists at Bournemouth University and scientists at Bangor University School of Ocean Sciences. It's part of ongoing work to try to identify hundreds of rex in the Irish Sea. Archaeologists working in the Adriatic Sea have confirmed that a shipwreck discovered there a few years ago is both the oldest and the best preserved ship in the area, and it's a somewhat surprising find as well. It's in water that is only about two and a half meters deep, but it was not spotted until just a few years ago. Slovenian archaeologist Milan Eric found it by accidents while anchoring a boat in Croatia and research started on it back in This is a wooden merchant vessel that dates back to about the second century BC. Research on the vessel required the team to dam off the surrounding area because the sand the vessel was resting in was so loose that it kept refilming behind them as they were trying to dig it out. Once excavation and conservation are complete, the wreck is planned to be housed in the Loan Museum and our last shipwreck. Authorities in Finland have retrieved a carved wooden lion's head from a shipwreck on the seafloor. This is pretty unusual and Finland shipwrecks are protected. Normally, artifacts are documented through photography and measurements are taken, but otherwise everything stays underwater, sort of similar to that first shipwreck that we talked about, the seventeenth century Flout, but in this case, the lion's face had fallen off the beam that would have been used to operate the ship's anchors. This beam was called a cathead because it was often decorated with the face of some kind of cat. This face had been attached back in two thousand five when divers visited the site, but when they went back this year it had fallen off, and so the decision was made to bring it up. All right, Now we're going to move on to some other things that are sunken or just otherwise underwater, but for the most part these are not shipwrecks. So first up, underwater teams have been working at the sunken city of Toni's Heracleon. The city was initially built on the Nile Delta about twenty seven hundred years ago, on small pieces of land connected by bridges and ferries. At one point, it was Egypt's largest port, but it eventually sank due to a combination of factors including earthquakes, tidal ways, and liquid faction of the land that it was resting on. Parts of the city disappeared around the second century BEAST and then the rest around the eighth century C. The remains of the city were discovered around the year two thousand, and At this point, only about three percent of the area has been explored. Recent finds at the site include a military vessel which apparently sank while being loaded with huge stone blocks in the second century b c. E Divers also found wicker baskets filled with fruits, particularly with doom, which is a fruit of an African palm tree. These baskets appear to date back to the fourth century b c e. And they may have been part of a funerary offering. The baskets were found in the same general area as a large burial mound that was also home to Greek funerary offerings. A Roman road was found submerged in part of the Venice Lagoon known as Traporti Channel. This doesn't just illustrate one of the areas of the lagoon that used to be accessible by land, it also suggests that there were Roman settlements in the area centuries before the city of Ennis was established. This research was conducted using sonar and they found evidence of twelve structures that would have been aligned along this road. One of the structures may have been a dock, suggesting that this road was situated on a sandy ridge that lay at the time along the lagoon, but now it's under it. Researchers from the University of Burn have dated underwater piles in Lake Orid in the Balkans, believed to be the oldest lake in Europe. This research involved the underwater remnants of about eight hundred piles, which would have supported the houses and other structures built on the lake. These piles are exceptionally well preserved thanks to the lack of oxygen at the bottom of the lake, and the oldest date back to the middle of the fifth millennium BC, but this site seems to have been used for thousands of years, with settlements essentially being built on top of one another. The remains of these pile dwellings are the only ones from the Neolithic period in this region to be so well preserved, and research done in the area suggests that this was home to Europe's first farmers. Let's take a real quick sponsor break before we move on to some royal residences. Like I said before the break, we've got a couple of fines now that are related to royal residences. First, the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Japan has excavated a ruin from the Hejokio Palace that they believed to have been the residence of Emperor cocin So, the female emperor who ruled in the eighth century. They unearthed the footprints of a rectangular structure that was dotted with about fifty pits. These pits would have held the pillars that supported the structure. They believe that this structure was in use for about twenty years and a team from the Royal Agricultural University and Wessex Archaeology have found an Early English cave house dating back to about the ninth century. The cave is cut from sandstone with windows and supporting pillars, and there's some speculation that it belonged to King Ardwolf, who ruled Northumbria until eight oh six and was later canonized as St. Rdulf. He was buried not far away from the cave house after his death. Moving on to some books and documents, in ten Michael Richardson from the University of Bristol's Special Collections Library found seven parchment pieces from a very old manuscript telling the story of Merlin the Magician. These had been used as binding materials for four other volumes that were published around the turn of the sixteenth century. It's not clear exactly why these fragments were used as binding material, but it was incredibly commend to repurpose parchment and paper from books and other materials once they were considered old or obsolete or otherwise no longer needed, reduced, reused, recycle uh. These fragments are from an early thirteenth century Old French sequence known as the Vulga Cycle or the Lancelot g Reel cycle, and it's possible that they were one of the inspirations for Sir Thomas Mallory's Lemore d'artur. It's also possible that Mallory's work is what led to these pieces of parchment being thought of as better suited for the scrap pile than for reading. Anymore, they may have been seen as more or less obsolete in light of Mallory's work being available. These fragments were dated to the early hundreds, and the text itself was probably written between twelve twenty and twelve twenty five, so this is one of the earliest known copies of this text. In July, an English translation of this material was published as The Bristol Merlin Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment. In addition to the translation, this book includes full color images of the seven parchment fragments. According to researchers at Yale University, a map known as the Vinland Map, which is supposedly a fifteenth century map detailing the northeastern coast of North America, it's really a twentieth century fake. Yale first announced the discovery of the map in nineteen sixty five, and from there people started pointing to it as evidence that the Norse arrived in North America well before Christopher Columbus's two voyage. There were definitely Norse settlements on what's now Newfoundland that predated Columbus's voyage, so the maps in authenticity does not undo all of that. It also appears that this map was intentionally created to be deceptive. It was made from pages that were repurposed from a fifteenth century volume called the Speculum Historiale and had a Latin inscription on the back written over book binders and stractions about how to bind that volume. This overwritten note contained some instructions for binding the map into the Speculum Historiale. It's likely that the forged map was drawn on the Speculum Historiale's blank in sheets, and then those were removed and bound into another volume that was a copy of the Tartar Relation. Both of these volumes were ultimately in the Yale collection, and researchers had access to both of them for as long as they needed to do this research. There were already questions about the maps authenticity Before this point, and earlier research had suggested that modern inks were present in at least some parts of the map, but this research examined all of the inc used on the map, finding that it contained a form of titanium dioxide that was not used commercially until the nineteen twenties. They didn't find evidence of the substances that would have been in fifteen century inks like iron, sulfur or copper, and last up in the documents and books. A signer's copy of the Declaration of Independence, which was found in an attic in Scotland, was sold at auction in July, with the buyer paying more than four million dollars for it. This copy had originally been presented to signer Charles Carroll, and from there it was passed down through family in Scotland before being found by Edinburgh based auctioneers Lion in Turnbull. This is one of two hundred and one copies that were commissioned by John Quincy Adams, who at the time was Secretary of State, and printed by William Stone, with only forty eight of them known to still exist today. It is the last copy known to be in private hands. The buyer was the family of George E. Norcross, the Third, who planned to preserve the document before putting it on display at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. Next up, we have three different fines, all of which are trees that they are three completely different types of trees. First, research into the family tree of Leonardo da Vinci has traced twenty one generations of the family, including five family branches and fourteen living descendants. The tree begins with Leonardo's ancestor, Michelle, born in thirteen thirty one, and traces the family's lineage through nearly seven hundred years. This work has been going on for the last decade. This research contributes to an affiliated project, the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project, which is an international project with a goal of determining whether remains reported to be Leonardo's really are his. This work could also help confirm whether artwork attributed to Leonardo really was his creation by evaluating any DNA the artist left behind while working on it. And our second tree, an excavation in China's Sichuan Province has unearthed a shoe culture sacred tree made of bronze. This tree is truly a shin dating back to the eleventh or twelfth century BC, and it's also really really intricate. There are flowers, fruits, and a solar wheel ornament branching off of a trunk that is held up by a three legged base. It is so large and complex, and there were so many other ivory artifacts and other items in the same area that it took four months to fully excavate it. At some point experts will probably try to reassemble it, but right now the priority is excavating the other sacrificial pits that are part of this complex. There have also been other bronze sacred trees excavated from these pits, and it is possible that they all belong to one connected piece and our third tree find Researchers at the Tree Ring Laboratory at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory are studying the United States old growth forests by examining the joists and beams that were cut from those old growth for pists and used to build New York City. In this case, they're the ones that were used to build Terminal Warehouse in Chelsea in eight one, which were removed during renovations in twenty nineteen. This work has been spearheaded by Edward Cook, head of the Tree Ring Lab, whose other research included studying the timber used to make old houses and a wooden sloop. The timbers they found at Terminal Warehouse include long leaf pine that was at least one fifty years old when it was cut, with most of the trees having been cut down in eight when the warehouse was built, or not long before then. The oldest of the trees had sprouted all the way back in fifteen twelve, and most of them had started growing sometime in the early seventeenth to mid eighteenth century. The team compared these timbers to previous research into long leaf pines they're growing today, including stands in the southeastern United States, and they found that the likely source for these specific timbers was eastern Alabama, not far from the Georgia border, maybe even into Georgia. Of course, the oldest would frame buildings in New York used timber that was way closer to New York, but by the nineteenth century most of those forests had been cut down and New York builders were using wood that came from a lot farther south. They might have even figured out exactly where this lumber came from, suggesting that sample lumber company near Holland's, Alabama was a candidate. Alright, we're ending this installment of uneartht on the edibles and potables. First to find near Newport, Pembrokeshire suggests that people in Wales we're farming dairy as long ago as thirty one b c e. Decorated pieces of pottery found there contain residues of dairy fat, possibly buttered or cheese, but researchers suggested the most likely source is yogurt. This is the earliest evidence of dairy farming in Wales. I find this next one both fascinating and kind of gross. Researchers in Denmark have analyzed the gut contents of a bog body known as Tall and Man. They found barley, porridge, flax seeds, and a small amount of fish which had been cooked in a clay pot to the point of being slightly burned. I feel kind of and unless this was you know, what folks actually liked eating, I feel kind of sad that Tall and Man's last meal was kind of burned. The team, though, so that these gut contents were so well preserved that they could probably recreate the recipe for this meal if they wanted. Isotope studies into the remains of people who died in the seaside town of Herculaneum when Vesuvius erupted in sevent have added more detail to what researchers already knew about their diets. Earlier archaeological work had uncovered evidence of fish, shellfish, olives, cherries, peaches, lentils, and beans, but these isotopic studies suggested that nearly a quarter of the protein in these people's diets came from fish. That's about three times more than the typical diet of people living in the area today, and more than ten percent of their calories came from olive oil. That lined up with previous estimates that Romans diets contained about twenty liters of olive oil annually. Some of the news coverage of this research made me laugh really hard, because instead of framing it like what we just said, it was more like, Uh, people in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum ate a lot of fish in olive oil. And I was like, no, really, really, are you telling me people on a coastal town in a place that is known for its olives, or eating fish and olive oil. What uh any the reasons was a lot more specific and interesting than that, And also there was some suggestion that people diets varied according to their gender, with men generally eating more cereals and seafood than women did. This was not universally true among every single set of remains that they studied, and it's also not clear exactly what might have led to this difference. It could have been something as simple as men being more directly involved in fishing and eating some of their catch to sustain themselves while they were at it. Moving on to a potable researchers in China have found evidence of some of the earliest known beer consumption, probably done as part of rituals to honor the dead. This came from a study of nine thousand year old pots from a mound that contained two human skeletons, as well as pits containing pottery vessels. Some of the vessels were painted and may also be some of the earliest known painted pottery in the world. Seven of the vessels found at the site were long necked pots that were known to be used to drink alcohol in later eras. So to confirm that these earlier pots were also used for the same purpose, researchers tested the residues inside them. They found starches, molds, and yeast which lined up with residues from fermenting beer. In this case, the beer was probably made from fermenting rice, grain and tours. And for our last food find and our last find for this installment of Unearthed, remember that Thermapoleon we talked about last year, that hot food Kiosk and Pompeii that was decorated with pictures of mallards, a rooster and a dog and a dog that I was worried about, but everybody said it was okay. Well, it opened to the public for viewing in August, so we can all go see the dog and know that he was protecting the food. Yes, once international travel is a little safer than it seems to be right now. Uh So that's our Unearthed for October. We'll be back with some more of this. I am anticipating that the Year and Unearthed will probably not be the very very first two episodes in January, just because of how at this moment it looks like our year end time off is going to fall, so same thing happened. I feel like this year probably happened again. So do not fret if the very first episode of January is not unearthed and you're really looking forward to it, it will be along there coming it is uh. And I have an email from Lizzie uh. And this is another email about Alistair Crowley. Uh. Lizzie wrote to say, hello, my dear historians, always delighted to have a new episode. And I had my finger on the trigger to write you over bodium, but then you went even more local to me. And this is something I know from local lore. Mr Alistair Crowley is said to have cursed our dear town of Hastings. I believe he was educated here for a while, and this might have even been where he was ill as a child. In any case, just to go with the way it's told, and not to site sources or look anything up, just to serve up oral history folklore to you direct from Hastings. He left, traveled all over the world, had all of his hedonistic adventures and wizard battles and what have you, only to end up back in dear old Hastings, an old and sick man. When he died here he declared something to the effect of once you stay in Hastings, you die there. I interpret it as something more akin to talking about his own condition, But he was so frightening to people. I can imagine talking of this curse could easily go from talking about himself feeling cursed, maybe as a result of one of those magic battles. Who knows or what have you too. It's seeming to be a declaration on the town itself. The town is really lovely, and I can imagine people would return here to live in retirement, so who knows. I certainly haven't escaped it yet. The sad thing is there was a pub on the site of the home he died in, but it was recently demolished and leave a small gatehouse building remains and maybe the side of his death, and the pub was in the main house, set further back from the road, and just enjoyed the notoriety for its marketing. I've heard a lot of accounts of it, and despite being something of a folklore scholar and really enjoying digging into the history of other places and stories, this one is so close to home, as in my roots to and from places I will literally go past that building very regularly. I rather enjoy keeping it all a mystery and living in this folkloric moment. Anyway, I thought this might give you a smile to the people of Hastings still talk about his curse regularly, and his memory very much lives on here. Lizzie, I love this story. I would also probably be reluctant to go try to dig up whether a particular piece of local lore was really a true thing or not. Uh if you would like to write to us about this or any other podcast where History podcast i heart radio dot com. We're also all over social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio app and wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.