0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of I Heart Radio. Hello

0:12

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

0:14

Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.

0:17

Is once again time for Unearthed.

0:20

Since we started doing these quarterly, it kind of

0:22

feels like it feels like it's always time. It

0:25

does. When you had mentioned you were

0:27

working on this one, I was like, no, yeah,

0:29

it's time. It is time. Uh.

0:32

If you are brand new to the show. Unearthed

0:35

is when we take a look at what has been literally

0:37

or figuratively unearthed over

0:40

the last few months. So this

0:42

installment of Unearthed is about

0:45

things that were unearthed in April,

0:47

May and June. This

0:51

installment part one, we

0:54

have updates and some jewelry and some

0:56

auctions and some books and letters

0:58

and some shipwrecks. And then in part

1:00

two of this Unearthed on Wednesday, will

1:02

have the edibles and potables and some art

1:05

and some animals other

1:07

stuff too. Once again,

1:09

we had two episodes worth of stuff. Looked

1:11

a little doubtful for a while there, but

1:17

so the Black Death made a bunch of headlines

1:19

in June after it was reported that researchers

1:22

had conclusively determined the starting

1:24

point of the second plague pandemic,

1:27

that's the centuries long pandemic that

1:29

the Black Death was part of. This

1:31

research was probably the biggest headline

1:34

maker of all of the headlines in this particular

1:36

installment of unearthed.

1:38

As described in research that was published

1:40

in the journal Nature, the team studied

1:43

DNA and a burial site in

1:45

modern Kurdistan. That

1:48

burial site has graves in it that date

1:50

back to the year thirteen thirty eight. Archaeologists

1:53

have actually known about this burial site

1:56

and the years engraved on the markers for more

1:58

than a century. What was not

2:00

known was whether the people buried

2:02

they're actually died of plague.

2:05

There's a word on these grave markers that

2:07

has been translated as pest or

2:09

as pestilence, and people do use that

2:11

to mean plague a whole lot, but it could also mean any

2:13

number of other diseases and conditions. So,

2:16

based on the time period and the way

2:18

people talked and wrote about the plague,

2:21

that seems like a pretty logical conclusion, So it

2:23

makes sense that researchers were

2:25

focused on this site. This

2:27

research did indeed confirm that

2:30

the people buried at these grave sites died

2:32

of plague. That plus

2:34

the years marked on the tombstones, means

2:36

we know for sure that there were people who died

2:38

of plague in eight and we're

2:40

buried at this location in modern Kyrgyzstan.

2:44

But the paper and the reporting around it made

2:46

it sound like a much broader discovery,

2:48

with headlines like origins of

2:50

the Black Death identified. That's

2:53

actually the headline on a release from

2:55

the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary

2:57

Anthropology, which was part of this work,

3:00

But it was also all over mainstream news

3:02

reporting with headlines like we finally

3:05

know where the Black Death started. This

3:07

is definitely a case where I saw those headlines and I was

3:09

like, did we though? Are you shore

3:12

sure about that? I was not the only

3:14

person with questions. People with

3:16

far more qualifications to study that

3:18

than me had questions. Also, not

3:21

everybody was sold on that conclusion. So, for

3:23

example, Dr Monica Green

3:25

has written extensively on the Black Death

3:27

and the Second Plague pandemic, and on

3:29

June twenty two she put out a thread on Twitter

3:32

about this paper. She noted

3:34

which parts of it confirmed to what was already

3:36

known, like the existence of this burial

3:39

site and the tombstones in it, as well

3:41

as what in this research builds

3:43

onto that existing knowledge, like confirming

3:46

that the pestilence that's referenced on

3:48

those tombstones really was the plague

3:50

and not something else. She also

3:53

looks at the DNA research that was done in

3:55

the study in detail in a way that isn't

3:57

really easy for us to capture his lay people

3:59

doing an audio podcast. Uh,

4:02

it's about single nucleotide

4:04

polymorphisms or s nps

4:06

pronounced snips. Those are basically

4:08

genetic variations or mutations.

4:11

Three of them are a key part in the

4:13

evolutionary history of your Cinea

4:15

pestis, and according to Green, the

4:18

analysis in the paper only has really

4:20

good coverage of one of them,

4:22

while also showing a fourth

4:25

snip that seems to be new. This

4:28

actually led us some back and forth on Twitter about

4:30

whether that fourth snip is really

4:32

a false positive or not. Beyond

4:35

that, though, Green also notes that a lot

4:37

of the more recent historical research

4:39

into the plague and the Black Death and

4:42

all of that has suggested that the

4:44

origins are in the thirteenth century,

4:46

not the fourteenth century where this research

4:48

was focused. So in addition to these questions

4:51

about the details of the DNA study,

4:53

there's a whole century of history

4:55

that's being omitted here. So, in other

4:57

words, the idea that this could

5:00

inclusively pinpoints

5:02

the starting point for the Black Death that

5:04

seems like a much bigger claim than can really

5:06

be supported by the details in this

5:08

paper. The Black Death has

5:11

come up a lot on the show. There's a short

5:13

episode on it from previous hosts back in two

5:15

thousand nine, but more recently,

5:17

it was a big part of our episode on What Tyler

5:20

in the Uprising of One

5:22

that came out on June

5:24

tenth. Moving

5:26

on, a team looking for evidence

5:29

regarding the murder of Emmett Till

5:31

found a warrant for the arrest of Caroline

5:33

Bryant Donham, named in the warrant

5:36

as Mrs roy Bryant. That

5:38

warrant dated back to August.

5:42

We talked about the lynching of Emmett Till in

5:44

our episode The Motherhood of Mamie Till

5:46

Mobile which came out August. The

5:50

team doing this research included

5:52

members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation

5:55

and Deborah Watts, who is one of Till's

5:58

cousins, is the head of the foundation, and

6:00

she and her daughter Terry were among the group

6:02

of people who was searching for

6:04

some kind of evidence here. In addition

6:06

to the earlier episode on Mamie Till Mobley,

6:09

we have also talked about this case on previous

6:11

installments of Unearthed, after the U.

6:13

S. Department of Justice reopened the case

6:16

in and then closed

6:18

it again in one saying that

6:20

no new evidence had been discovered that

6:22

could lead to an arrest of a living person.

6:25

Caroline Bryant Dunham is still living

6:28

and people involved with this case have expressed

6:30

their hope that this old warrant could still

6:33

be served. People knew

6:35

about this warrant back in ninety

6:37

five, but the Lafleur County sheriff

6:39

at the time told reporters

6:41

that they didn't want to bother her.

6:44

Her then husband, Roy Bryant, and

6:46

another man named JW. Milam

6:48

were tried for this crime and acquitted,

6:51

but they confessed to the crime in an interview that they

6:53

later sold to a reporter for four thousand

6:56

dollars. So there's been

6:58

some discussion of whether this war it

7:00

could be the thing that allows there to be

7:03

some more progress on the case. This

7:05

next thing is not exactly an update,

7:07

but it is related to an earlier episode topic.

7:10

A statue of dancer Marjorie tall

7:12

Chief was stolen from the Vintage Garden

7:14

at the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum

7:17

at the end of April. Marjorie

7:20

was the sister of pass podcast subject

7:22

Maria tal Chief, who is another of

7:24

the indigenous ballerinas honored with a statue

7:26

at the garden. We covered Maria

7:28

tal Chief on the show on November. A

7:32

few days after this theft was discovered,

7:35

the Historical Society got a call from

7:37

CMC Recycling, which buys

7:39

scrap metal, and the recycling

7:41

center was reporting that it had pieces

7:44

of this statue. Somebody had cut it up

7:46

into parts and then had sold the pieces

7:48

to them as scrap. The statues

7:50

of Marjorie and Maria tal Chief are part

7:52

of a work called Five Moons. This

7:55

was the work of artists Monty England

7:57

and Gary Henson. It honors

7:59

five indigenous ballerinas from what's

8:01

now Oklahoma. England

8:04

died in two thousand five and the original

8:06

mold for the statue of Marjorie tall Chief

8:08

was destroyed in a foundry fire. So

8:11

while a fundraiser to replace the statue

8:14

met its goal right away, it initially

8:16

seemed like it would kind of be a challenge to

8:18

actually make a replacement. A

8:20

bit later in May, though, additional

8:23

pieces of the statue were recovered

8:25

at another recycling center, including

8:27

the head of the statue, and although there's some

8:29

pieces that are still missing. Henson,

8:32

who's a member of the Shawnee tribe, was quoted

8:34

as saying, with the amount of the statue that's been recovered

8:36

so far, he's confident that

8:38

he's was going to be able to restore it. Previous

8:41

host of the show talked about the mary Rose

8:44

in their episode five Shipwreck Stories

8:46

in The mary

8:48

Rose sank in five and

8:51

is now in the Mary Rose Museum.

8:53

At the end of one, we talked

8:55

about conservation efforts involving the mary

8:58

Rose, which involved pinpointing exactly

9:01

where bacteria are living within the preserved

9:03

wreckage because secretions from those

9:05

bacteria could become acidic

9:07

when exposed to air, and that could cause

9:09

the wreckage to deteriorate. The

9:12

hull of the ship itself is not the only

9:14

part of this wreck that has been brought to

9:16

the museum or is now facing some

9:18

challenges with preservation. The

9:21

mary Rose had two brick ovens,

9:23

and bricks from those events are also

9:26

at the museum, and they're also being

9:28

affected by acids. When

9:30

the bricks were recovered from the wreck site,

9:32

they were washed and dried to remove

9:34

the salt water that they had been soaking in for

9:36

centuries. Conservators

9:39

thought that the bricks were stable at that point,

9:41

but more recently, salt crystals

9:44

have started forming on them, suggesting

9:46

that there is still something going on inside

9:48

them that could be causing damage. The

9:50

researchers have been using a bunch of

9:53

different imaging and analysis techniques

9:55

to try to get a sense of both the physical

9:57

and the chemical processes that might be

10:00

work here. This is involved

10:02

examining the bricks themselves and

10:04

the crystals that have been growing on them,

10:06

and much like the way those bacterial secretions

10:09

could become acidic when they're exposed to

10:11

air, these salts seem

10:13

to have created an acidic environment

10:15

inside the bricks as they've dissolved.

10:18

One interesting part of all this is that

10:20

the team didn't find evidence of sodium

10:23

or chlorine, which are the key components

10:25

of sea salt. That suggests

10:27

that the original washing treatments on the bricks

10:30

did remove sea salt as intended,

10:32

but that these other salts were left behind.

10:36

Like the work that we previously discussed

10:38

around the Merry Rose. This is a work in progress

10:40

with the team trying to find ways to figure out

10:43

what they should do next. Let's

10:45

take a quick sponsor break before we get back

10:47

to another update of another shipwreck.

10:59

The Clotilda has made a few appearances

11:01

on Unearthed. This was the last

11:04

vessel known to bring enslaved people

11:06

into the United States, and then after

11:08

that happened, it's captain intentionally

11:11

burned and sank it in the Mobile

11:13

River in Alabama. This was an

11:15

eighteen sixty and that was almost fifty

11:18

years after Congress passed the

11:20

Act prohibiting the importation of

11:22

slaves, so that

11:24

was illegal, but people were still doing it anyway.

11:28

In previous episodes, we have talked

11:30

about the discoveries of other wrecks

11:32

that were believed to be the Clotilda. We

11:35

also have talked about this one, which was

11:37

confirmed to be the correct ship in twenty

11:39

nine. Team researchers started

11:41

making their first research dives to the

11:43

wreck in May of this year. They've

11:46

been studying and scanning the wreck itself

11:48

and evaluating its integrity, as well

11:50

as organisms living in the wreck which

11:52

play a part in its overall integrity.

11:55

They have also been looking for and retrieving

11:57

disarticulated pieces of the wreck.

12:00

Before setting fire to the Clotilda,

12:02

the slave traffickers who were using it transferred

12:05

everyone aboard onto a river boat,

12:07

so there should not have been any people

12:10

on board when it's sank. But the

12:12

team is also looking for DNA evidence

12:15

from the ship. They're doing that by collecting

12:17

small core samples from the ship, and

12:19

the hope is that they'll be able

12:22

to connect people who were trafficked aboard

12:24

this ship to their living descendants

12:26

today. And speaking of DNA,

12:29

for the first time, scientists have sequenced

12:32

the genome of someone who died at Pompeii

12:34

after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in

12:36

the year seventy nine. Researchers

12:39

extracted DNA from two sets of remains

12:41

that were found close to each other at a

12:43

building called the House of the Craftsman. One

12:46

appeared to be from a man between the ages

12:49

of thirty five and forty, and the other from

12:51

a woman estimated to be about fifty,

12:54

but there were gaps in the woman's DNA

12:56

sequence, so only the man's was used for

12:58

this genome sequencing. After

13:00

comparing this DNA to that

13:03

of more than a thousand other ancient

13:05

people and that of four seventy

13:07

one people from Western Europe today.

13:10

They found out this person had DNA similar

13:13

to people living in Italy during the Roman

13:15

Era and to people who are living in modern

13:17

Italy. That lines up with

13:20

what you would expect based on this

13:22

person being at Pompey when it was destroyed.

13:24

Then by examining his mitochondrial

13:27

DNA, researchers also determined

13:29

that he had some genes in common with people

13:31

from Sardinia which aren't

13:34

also shared with people from other parts of

13:36

Italy, so it seems like he had some ancestry

13:38

there as well, and this gives us

13:40

a glimpse into the possible diversity

13:42

and mobility of people who were living

13:44

in this part of the world almost two thousand

13:46

years ago. The people who died

13:48

at Pompeii were covered in ash and that

13:51

protected their DNA from some of the

13:53

factors that would normally cause it to degrade

13:55

over thousands of years. But

13:57

even so, getting enough intact DNA

14:00

to sequence a whole genome has been a very lengthy

14:02

process. Yeah, they've had

14:04

lots of other attempts that have not worked out,

14:07

and other Pompeii News. One

14:10

of the latest finds there is a tortoise,

14:12

either a wild tortoise from somewhere

14:14

near the city or somebody's pet. This

14:17

tortoise seems to have burrowed under

14:19

some debris to lay her eggs. The

14:21

tortoise was removed in stages and an egg

14:24

was found still inside her body.

14:26

So this tortoise was found under the remains

14:28

of a building that had already been destroyed

14:30

in the earthquake that happened shortly before

14:33

uh everything else was destroyed in the volcanic

14:35

eruption. Sometimes when you see

14:38

things that people like, ah, that's that's the

14:40

remains of whatever animal, and you're like, is

14:42

it really though this? You look at the pictures

14:44

and you're like, that is that's a tortoise right

14:46

there. There

14:50

are still fines coming up from the Anti

14:53

Kids Are a shipwreck as part of the return

14:55

to Anti Kids Are a project including

14:57

the head of a statue of Hercules. It's

15:00

possible that this two thousand year old head

15:02

is the one that goes on the body of a statue

15:04

that sponge divers found in nineteen hundred

15:07

and which is now in the Athens National

15:09

Archaeological Museum. Other

15:12

finds from this latest set of dives

15:14

include some of the ship's equipment, including

15:16

parts of the anchor, parts of a

15:19

marble statue base, and some

15:21

human teeth. Maybe

15:23

the bell witch put them there. Thinking

15:27

about that, every

15:30

time we talk about teeth, I think I've heard um.

15:33

And in our last update for now,

15:36

Vinda Luanda has made several appearances

15:38

on previous episodes of Unearthed. That's

15:40

the Roman fort and settlement in Northumberland

15:43

that's home to all kinds of ongoing archaeological

15:46

work. And in May the team

15:48

at Vindolanda announced a new finding

15:50

dating back to the third century, a

15:52

large piece of stone carved with a

15:55

fallus and engraved with the words second

15:57

Dennis Kakore, which we will translate

16:00

approximately to second

16:02

Dennis the pooper. Yeah.

16:04

Most articles about this translate with

16:06

the word that's a little more stronger

16:09

than pooper. Uh

16:12

Phallust's were often used as a symbol

16:14

of good luck at this place in time.

16:17

There are lots of fallus engravings

16:19

around this one, though seems

16:21

more clearly meant as an

16:23

insult. Somebody did

16:25

not like that guy. I like that.

16:28

We found um

16:30

essentially like very intensely

16:32

created insult graffiti.

16:35

Yeah, that's basically what that is. Moving

16:38

on, we have a few pieces of jewelry

16:41

and clothing and similar items. You

16:44

know those best friend necklaces

16:46

that are made to resemble a broken heart where

16:48

one friend wears half and the other friend wears the other.

16:50

Tracy might have thought these didn't still exist. They

16:53

do. I assure you. You can even get Star Wars

16:55

ones. Yeah, I just associate them

16:57

with being thirteen in early

17:01

uh like decades ago, so

17:04

that's just the

17:06

last time you encounter them, perhaps, but they

17:08

are still out there doing the rounds uh

17:11

well. Postdoctoral researcher

17:14

Maria Ajala from the University

17:16

of Helsinki has been examining

17:18

slate ring ornaments that may have been put

17:20

to similar use about six thousand

17:22

years ago. So there are a lot

17:24

of these rings in the archaeological

17:26

record, but for the most part they have

17:29

not been found intact, and

17:31

that is not really surprising. A

17:34

lot of stuff in the archaeological record

17:36

is broken, and these are small slate

17:38

rings that are thousands of years old, so

17:41

would not necessarily expect a lot of them

17:44

to be whole at this point. But

17:46

Ahala's research suggests

17:48

that these did not just break through where or

17:50

handling or everything associated with the

17:52

passage of all that time. That instead,

17:54

at least some of them were broken

17:57

intentionally and then possibly

17:59

used to maintain or signify relationships

18:01

in the community, so one person gets one piece

18:03

and one person gets the other piece. This

18:06

research involved a whole group from the

18:08

University of Helsinki and the University

18:10

of Turku, and they matched up the

18:12

pieces of these rings and analyzed their

18:14

geochemical composition, and

18:16

they found that in some cases different

18:19

parts of the same ring had been found

18:21

in two different locations. Some

18:24

of the rings were also found hundreds of kilometers

18:26

from where they were made, again suggesting

18:29

that they were playing some role within a large,

18:31

interconnected community network. Moving

18:34

on, what maybe the oldest prayer

18:37

beads so far found in Britain

18:39

have been unearthed on the island of Lindisfarne.

18:43

These were found near the neck of some skeletal

18:45

remains that may have belonged to a monk,

18:48

and it's likely that they were strung together

18:50

and worn, although if that's the case,

18:53

the string itself is no longer there, which

18:55

again it's not very surprising. They're

18:57

made from salmon vertebrae

18:59

and the whole through the vertebrae, which are

19:01

naturally occurring as part of their anatomy.

19:04

Those holes have been enlarged, either intentionally

19:07

or as a side effect of their having been worn

19:09

on a string. You date back

19:11

to the eighth or ninth century, and I

19:13

just think the idea of having

19:15

your prayer beads made out of fish Ford ray

19:18

like, that's cool. Well, it

19:20

it makes me envision a future craft project,

19:22

is what it makes me. I'm

19:25

like, how, well, what do you have to

19:27

do to sterilize those guys? What do you Let's

19:29

uh, let's talk about this next up.

19:31

A hiker in Norway spotted a sandal

19:34

sticking out of melting ice in The

19:38

hiker got in touch with a glacial archaeology

19:40

program called Secrets of the Ice, and

19:42

a team went to investigate. They

19:45

got to the site in time to excavate

19:47

the sandal and several other items

19:49

before a snowstorm covered it all back

19:51

up. Since that time,

19:54

the team from Secrets of the Ice has made a replica

19:56

of the sandal, which resembles a Roman

19:58

laceup sandal called a carbontina.

20:01

Then raised some questions about that seems

20:04

like not very adequate footwear

20:07

for a frozen snowy place. Uh

20:10

there was a suggestion that maybe they were worn with socks.

20:13

They've also done some radio carbon dating

20:15

and confirmed that the sandal dates back

20:17

to the fourth century, meaning that the

20:20

mountain pass where this was found was already

20:22

in use by that point. Most

20:24

recently, the sandal has been part of a report

20:27

from the Norwegian University of Science and

20:29

Technology about discoveries like

20:31

this one which are revealed as glaciers

20:34

melt, and how a lack of funding and

20:36

monitoring is preventing researchers

20:38

from being able to find and retrieve many of

20:40

these kinds of objects before they

20:42

saw out and are destroyed. And

20:44

in our last jewelry find,

20:47

a man plowing a field in Turkeya

20:49

also known as Turkey plowed

20:52

up at thirty three year old bracelets.

20:54

He took this bracelet to the Chora Museum,

20:56

which restored it and confirms that

20:59

it came from the hits civilization. Although

21:02

this region was home to the capital of the

21:04

Hittite civilization, there haven't

21:06

been many pieces of Hittite jewelry found,

21:09

so this discovery is helping researchers

21:11

get more of a sense of its jewelry styles.

21:13

And jewelry making techniques. This

21:15

one is kind of like a large bangle made

21:18

of bronze, silver and gold, and

21:20

it's decorated with Hittite symbols and

21:22

figures. We're gonna take a quick

21:24

sponsor break and then talk about some things that

21:26

showed up at auction. Next

21:37

up, we have a few notable items

21:40

that have gone up for auction over the last

21:42

few months. First,

21:44

a violin made by Antonio

21:46

Stratabari in seventeen fourteen

21:49

called the Da Vinci X

21:51

Sidell Violin, sold

21:53

at auction in June for fifteen

21:55

point nine million dollars. I

21:59

don't know why all the need to say it that dramatically.

22:01

It's it's it's a lot

22:03

of money. That's a lot of money,

22:06

but also um

22:08

in line with the amount of money that a

22:11

person would expect to see for a

22:13

strata various violin. This

22:16

instrument was given the Da Vinci

22:18

nickname in the nineteen twenties, and the ex

22:20

sidel denotes that it previously

22:23

belonged to Totia side L. Tosia

22:26

side L was a virtuoso violinist

22:28

who played this instrument in orchestral

22:31

performances and on film scores.

22:34

It may have been included in the score to

22:36

The Wizard of Oz. That's

22:39

sort of like a there's some conjecture

22:41

involved there, because he

22:43

definitely recorded violin music

22:46

for a number of film scores and

22:48

was working for MGM around

22:50

the time that that score was recorded,

22:53

but his involvement is not specifically noted

22:57

anywhere um it

23:00

as though included in a lot of other four film

23:02

scores from around that time. In

23:04

our next auction, a medal commemorating

23:07

General Daniel Morgan and his victory

23:09

at the Battle of Cowpens during the American

23:11

Revolution has been sold at auction

23:13

for almost a million dollars. Apart

23:16

from the record setting price tag. Before

23:18

the medal appeared at auction, it was

23:20

believed to be lost. Yeah.

23:23

This medal was originally part of

23:25

a series of a hundred and thirty three medals

23:27

called the Comita Americana. The

23:29

United States commissioned French artists

23:32

to create these medals between seventeen

23:34

seventy six and the early nineteenth century.

23:37

They all commemorate notable people and events

23:39

from the Revolutionary War. The

23:42

Morgan medal was designed by

23:44

Augustine Duprey and it was struck in

23:46

Paris, in seventeen eighty nine. When

23:49

General Morgan died in eighteen o two,

23:51

his grandson Morgan Lafayette

23:54

Neville inherited this medal,

23:57

but then it was stolen from the bank

23:59

where he worked the cashier in eighteen eighteen.

24:02

In addition to the medal, the thieves

24:04

stole more than a hundred thousand dollars

24:07

and some gold and silver and other

24:09

medals from the bank faults. This is part of a

24:11

big bank heist. Although these

24:13

thieves were apprehended and one of them helped

24:16

authorities recover most of the stolen

24:18

goods, the original Morgan metal

24:20

was among the items that were never found. One

24:23

of the thieves claimed that it had been in a bag

24:25

that was dropped into the Ohio River. So

24:28

Congress approved a replacement medal to be

24:31

made at the Philadelphia Mint and that was

24:33

given to General Morgan's great grandson

24:35

in eighteen forty one. That's

24:38

not the end of this saga, though,

24:41

JP Morgan bought the medal in

24:43

the eighteen eighties, which for some reason,

24:45

when I got to that part in the story, I went, ah

24:48

man out loud, like I don't. JP

24:51

Morgan bought other stuff that did not then

24:54

get the destroyed somehow, but

24:57

Morgan believed incorrectly that he was

25:00

related to General Daniel Morgan, and

25:02

at some point after he bought the medal, it disappeared.

25:05

It was believed to have been lost or melted

25:08

down until an anonymous

25:10

person consigned it to auction house Stacks

25:12

Bowers, just seemingly

25:14

out of nowhere. The buyer who

25:17

spent nine hundred sixty dollars

25:19

on it that's a bid of eight hundred thousand

25:21

dollars plus a buyer's premium,

25:24

is also anonymous, but an executive

25:27

from the auction house has publicly maintained

25:29

that it has quote gone to a good

25:31

home. I don't know what that is

25:34

meant to mean. I'm gonna make

25:37

sure it gets proper nutrition and the bus

25:40

reading it like it was, they sent the middle

25:42

the medal to live on a farm up state

25:47

uh anyway. Next,

25:50

a tiny book of poems

25:53

by Charlotte Bronte was sold at auction

25:55

in April. This tiny

25:57

book had last been sold at auction in nine

26:00

sixteen, and after that point it seemed to

26:02

disappear until somebody found

26:04

it in an envelope that was tucked inside

26:06

a nineteenth century book. This

26:09

was the last of her known tiny

26:12

books to be in private hands. We've talked

26:14

about these tiny Charlotte Bronte books and

26:17

the other Brontes tiny books at

26:19

various points in the show before. Yeah,

26:22

Bronte wrote the poems when she was about

26:24

thirteen, and she made them into a book by

26:26

hand, sewing it together with a

26:28

needle and thread. The book is

26:30

fifteen pages long and it contains ten

26:33

poems, and it is titled A Book

26:35

of Rhymes by Charlotte Bronte, sold

26:37

by nobody and printed by herself.

26:40

The word rhymes is misspelled, with the

26:42

H and the Y transposed. As

26:45

far as we know, these are the only previously

26:47

unpublished poems by Charlotte Bronte.

26:50

I find that that flip of the H and the

26:52

y really charming. Um. When

26:56

the sale of this tiny book was originally

26:58

publicized, the I or was anonymous,

27:01

so there was was of course some

27:03

level of upset by people who felt like that this

27:06

should be in a museum. A few days

27:08

later, though, it was announced that the

27:10

purchaser was the Friends of the National

27:12

Libraries, who bought it for one point to five

27:15

million dollars and is donating it to the

27:17

Bronte Parsonage Museum. I

27:19

have thoughts about giant auctions

27:22

and anonymity that we will talk

27:24

about on Friday, Okay maybe.

27:29

And lastly, Saw the Bees will be auctioning

27:32

off a three hundred nine year

27:34

old copy of Shakespeare's First Folio

27:36

on July seven. That's after we record

27:38

this, but it is before the episode will come

27:41

out. Two d thirty

27:43

five of the seven hundred fifty copies that

27:45

were originally made of the First Folio are

27:47

still known to exist today, but

27:49

fewer than twenty are in private collections,

27:52

so one showing up at auction really

27:54

doesn't happen very often. Yeah, we

27:56

may have another update on this later

27:59

on in a few your installment of Unearthed.

28:02

Those last couple of auctions could

28:04

also have been filed under books and letters,

28:07

and that's what we're turning to next. According

28:09

to research published in Advances in

28:11

Space Research, researchers have found

28:14

the oldest known written record

28:16

of an aurora. This was

28:18

in a Chinese text called the Bamboo

28:20

Annals, which date back to about the tenth

28:23

century BC. This

28:25

describes a multicolored light in

28:27

the sky during the reign of King

28:29

Zhao, who was the fourth king

28:32

of the Jou dynasty. This

28:34

paper is about more than just the existence

28:36

of the document and a possible description

28:38

of an aurora. In it, it tries to calculate

28:41

exactly where this observation happened,

28:43

and more precisely when concluding

28:46

that the phenomenon was observed near the ancient

28:48

settlement of how Jing sometime

28:50

in nine seventy seven or nine fifty

28:52

seven BC plus or minus

28:55

a year. Reporting about

28:57

this makes it sound way more conclusive than

28:59

the paper itself seems to, so the headline

29:01

say things like earliest description of

29:03

aurora found, while the paper describes

29:06

this more as a candidate for

29:08

the earliest description of an aurora. The

29:11

paper also notes that earlier interpretations

29:13

of exactly what was observed and

29:16

where that observation was made have been kind

29:18

of controversial. I love how we have

29:20

so many stories that are like well the headline. The

29:23

headline says this, with

29:25

the that's not what the actual contents reveal.

29:29

Moving on. On March nine, an anonymous

29:32

person returned to missing notebooks

29:34

belonging to Charles Darwin to

29:36

the Cambridge University Library, along

29:39

with a note that read librarian,

29:41

Happy Easter X. But

29:44

we would have needed a time machine to have talked

29:46

about this on our previous installment of Unearthed,

29:48

because it wasn't announced until April,

29:51

which was after the Spring Unearthed episodes

29:53

were written and recorded. The Cambridge

29:55

University Library had put out a public

29:58

appeal for the return of the notebooks

30:00

in November after

30:03

realizing that these books they were not just misplaced,

30:06

they were actually missing from the library. They

30:08

had been removed from the shelf where they normally

30:10

lived in two thousands so they could be photographed,

30:13

and then in early two thousand one somebody

30:16

discovered that the notebooks had not been

30:18

put back where they were supposed to go. At

30:21

first, the staff just thought they had been

30:23

misplaced somewhere, like they had been put on

30:25

the wrong shelf for something. That's kind

30:28

of a running theme on Unearthed. There

30:30

have been various points, so we've talked about people

30:32

finding things in their own collection because it

30:34

had just been put in the wrong spot. When

30:36

the library realized that the notebooks

30:38

were really gone, they were not in the library

30:41

anymore, they reported it to the police.

30:43

That police report was made in October. Of these

30:47

notebooks are from after Darwin returned

30:49

from his voyage aboard the Beagle, and one

30:51

of them includes the famous Tree of Life

30:53

sketch that illustrates his thought processes.

30:56

He was working through the idea that would later become

30:59

part of his land mark work on the Origin

31:01

of species. According to

31:03

news reporting, when this was announced, a

31:05

police investigation was still ongoing.

31:08

The notebooks were left in a pink gift

31:11

bag and they were wrapped up in plastic wrap,

31:13

and they were in a part of the library that

31:15

isn't covered by security cameras. Now

31:18

that these have been found, the library was planning

31:20

to put them on display in an exhibit

31:23

called Darwin in Conversation

31:25

that scheduled to open on July nine. Again,

31:28

that is after this episode is being recorded,

31:30

but before it will actually come out. Speaking

31:33

of returned books, an original manuscript

31:36

by Nostradama's disappeared from the Barnabid

31:38

Center for Historical Studies in Rome

31:41

sometime around two thousand seven

31:43

and was presumably stolen. It

31:46

resurfaced last year when an art

31:48

dealer tried to auction it off. Apparently

31:51

it had moved through a series of flea markets

31:53

before showing up on the German auction house

31:55

website, and that is when authorities

31:58

spotted it. Both manuscript just

32:00

about five hundred pages long, and

32:02

one of those pages is marked with a stamp from

32:04

nineteen one, which

32:06

is what allowed investigators to conclusively

32:09

trace it back to the library and than

32:11

thinking maybe it was a different copy of the same

32:13

book. It was returned to the library

32:15

in May, and for our

32:17

last thing under Books and Letters. During

32:20

COVID lockdowns, the Leads Central

32:22

Library surveyed its rare books and special

32:25

collections. During this process,

32:27

they found about three thousand items

32:29

that, for one reason or another, had

32:32

not been cataloged. One was

32:34

a tiny, tiny Bible

32:36

containing the Old and New Testaments.

32:39

This is a teeny teeny version of

32:41

the Great Bible of fifteen thirty nine,

32:44

which was nicknamed the Chained Bible

32:46

because there was supposed to be one in each church

32:49

where it would be chained to the pulpit to keep

32:51

people from walking away with it. Was

32:53

supposed to make the Bible more accessible

32:56

to people, but not so accessible that you can take

32:58

it out of the church. The Chained

33:00

Bible was pretty big. This is the opposite.

33:02

It's type is so small that it has

33:04

to be read with a magnifying glass. The

33:07

library is actually not sure where

33:09

it came from or how it came to be in their collections

33:13

theories already. We can talk about

33:15

that on Friday teeth. I'm

33:19

making a note so I don't forget. It's

33:23

time for shipwrecks, everybody's favorite.

33:26

Hooray. Construction workers

33:28

in tell in Estonia have found the wreck

33:30

of a cog believed to have belonged to the

33:33

Henseatic League. It was found under

33:35

a street under about five ft of earth

33:37

in an area that used to be covered in water.

33:40

This cog is about eighty feet long and

33:43

made of oak, with the spaces in between

33:45

the planks sealed with tar and animal

33:47

hair. It's been dated to the end of the

33:49

thirteenth century, and things like shoes,

33:52

packing material and tools have also

33:54

been found nearby. As

33:57

of April, there wasn't a clear plan

33:59

for the because of its size. If

34:01

it's going to be moved, it has to be moved in

34:03

pieces. But it was found during

34:06

construction of a new office building, and

34:08

that construction has been delayed by a couple

34:10

of months because of this shipwreck. Fined

34:13

next, the government of Colombia

34:15

has released photos of the wreck of

34:17

the San Jose, which sank off of Cartagena

34:20

in seventeen o eight. This

34:22

ship was part of a convoy of merchant

34:25

vessels and was carrying goods that

34:27

are estimated to be worth billions of dollars

34:29

today. These photos

34:32

were taken over a series of studies

34:34

of the wreck using remotely operated vehicles,

34:36

and they show that the ship is still full of

34:38

things like pottery, glassware, and

34:41

gold. It's believed to contain

34:43

at least two tons of precious

34:46

metals and gemstones. Two

34:48

other wrecks were discovered as part of this

34:50

work, described as a colonial era

34:53

galleon and a schooner from the post colonial

34:55

period. There is ongoing

34:58

debate about who can claim the wreck

35:00

of the San Jose. It was a Spanish

35:02

ship, so Spain says that's

35:05

ours, but it was found off

35:07

the coast of Columbia. Columbia

35:09

is like that gives us DIBs on it.

35:12

A lot of the precious metals aboard, though,

35:14

were mined by the Cohara Cohara people,

35:16

whose homeland isn't what's now Bolivia.

35:20

Lots of people with claims on it. Back

35:22

in two thousand seven, divers and international

35:25

waters off the coast of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

35:27

found a cannon from a shipwreck that they believed

35:30

to be the HMS Gloucester. The

35:32

ship's identity was confirmed when its bell

35:34

was brought up to the surface in t but

35:37

the discovery of the ship itself wasn't

35:39

announced until June of this year for

35:41

security reasons. Because

35:43

it was in international waters, authorities

35:46

needed time to secure the site. Gloucester

35:49

ran aground in six eighty

35:51

two with the Duke of York on board,

35:54

and that Duke of York later became

35:56

James the second and seventh and

35:58

the words of Professor Larage how at the

36:01

University of East Anglia quote

36:03

because of the circumstances of its sinking,

36:06

this can be claimed as the single most

36:08

significant historic maritime discovery

36:11

since the raising of the Merry Rose in

36:15

Although the Duke and more than three hundred

36:17

people aboard survived this wreck, hundreds

36:20

of other passengers and crew did not. At

36:22

this point, researchers haven't found any

36:25

human remains at the wreck site, but they have found

36:27

things like clothing, equipment, and wine

36:29

bottles. An exhibition is planned

36:32

for some of the items that have been recovered that

36:34

is set to start in the spring of next

36:39

Archaeologists have found at hundred

36:41

year old shipwreck in a stream outside

36:44

of Bordeaux France. There seems

36:46

to have been a cargo ship that was capable

36:48

of navigating both rivers and coastal

36:51

waters. This wreck is being

36:53

removed for further study. There

36:55

aren't a lot of records about exactly

36:57

how ships were built in this for picular

37:00

time and place, so this find is an important

37:02

source of information on that, and

37:04

its removal is a feat It's about twelve

37:07

meters long, and it has to be cleared

37:09

of sediment and mapped and documented,

37:11

and then every piece of wood is being individually

37:14

numbered and moved the whole process.

37:17

And our last shipwreck of this installment

37:20

of Unearthed, a shipwreck in the Philippines

37:22

has been identified as the destroyer USS

37:25

Samuel B. Roberts, which sank in

37:27

battle in n It

37:30

was found at a depth of six thousand, nine

37:32

eight five ms that's twenty two nine

37:35

hundred sixteen feet and that is more

37:37

than four miles, making it the

37:39

deepest shipwreck ever discovered. According

37:42

to a statement by retired admiral and

37:45

naval historian Samuel J. Cox, the

37:47

site is a hallowed war grave. Eighty

37:50

nine of its crew of two hundred twenty

37:52

four were killed when the ship went down, so

37:55

that's it. For part one of this installment

37:57

of Unearthed, and we'll be back on Wednesday with

38:00

some more fines. You got

38:02

a little listener mail I do. I

38:04

have listener mail from Michelle Youse.

38:08

Title for the email was

38:11

West Wing not compulsory, but perhaps

38:14

Terry Pratchett is uh,

38:16

and Michelle wrote, high amazing women. I've been

38:18

listening since Christmas twenty twenty, starting

38:20

at the beginning, and earned the stuff you miss in history class

38:22

PhD sometime last year.

38:25

It's been great listening to all the podcasts

38:27

when I'm mowing the lawn, walking crocheng

38:30

or running when it's not too hot. I live in Darwin

38:32

in the Northern Territory, Australia Tropics.

38:36

As soon as I saw the title of the last episode,

38:38

mar Cater, I immediately thought of the West

38:41

Wing episode clip and the characters trying

38:43

to turn their heads upside down to understand

38:45

the map when it was reversed. I was

38:47

wondering if you had mentioned the episode. I

38:50

didn't think you would since in other episodes I've

38:52

thought this is referenced on the West Wing,

38:54

but you haven't mentioned it. And given that I'm the

38:56

same ages Tracy and loved Terry

38:58

Pratchett. I wonder if this mystery would

39:01

ever be solved, and today it was Tracy

39:03

hasn't watched The West Wing. What an obvious

39:06

answer. And don't worry. I'm not telling

39:08

you to watch the show. I am saying

39:10

your photos on the I Heart Radio episode

39:13

are fantastic and I love the photo of you

39:15

both and dress up on the Facebook

39:17

page. My friends and I call that open mouth

39:19

type of photo a muppet photo. My wedding

39:21

photos look like that. Thanks

39:24

for your fine work. Michelle

39:26

goes on to suggest some episode

39:28

topics related to First Nation's history from

39:31

Australia, and then has

39:33

some animal pictures,

39:37

which the first

39:40

is a frilled neck lizard

39:42

from around where Michelle lives.

39:44

And this particular picture when

39:47

I saw, for some reason,

39:49

my brain was like, that looks like a

39:51

lizard. But the

39:54

head of this lizard does not make any sense to

39:56

me, I

39:58

think because like I had not really

40:01

thought through the like the thrilled neck

40:03

aspect of it. And then we have lots of adorable

40:06

dog pictures, So

40:08

thank you so much for these pictures. As

40:11

for topic suggestions, one

40:14

piece of complexity involving First

40:17

Nation's history related to Australia is that

40:19

some of the cultures involved have cultural

40:22

taboos regarding death and

40:25

uh using the names of people who have died,

40:28

and that sort of adds a piece of complexity

40:30

and like how we would approach and talk about

40:32

those episodes and what we would need to do regarding

40:34

that. So thank you for these

40:37

suggestions. That is an

40:39

aspect of thinking through how we might would

40:41

incorporate them. So thank

40:45

you again for this um, this story

40:47

and these uh these animal

40:49

pictures. I sure do love

40:51

Terry Pratchett, and I'm glad to have solved

40:54

the mystery that I have not watched

40:56

any episode of The West Wing all the way through.

40:59

I I've only seen I don't even know. I think it's

41:01

just like I think something

41:04

about the Mercatur projection floated

41:08

that clip up to the top

41:10

of my my YouTube feed

41:12

somehow, like that is where

41:14

I thought it was on YouTube, So that's

41:17

what it's wi. I've never mentioned the West Wing. If

41:20

you would like to send us a note about

41:22

this or anither podcast or history podcast

41:25

at I heeart radio dot com. We're

41:27

also all over social media

41:29

at Missing History That's Sorrow fund our Facebook, Twitter,

41:31

at Pinterest, and Instagram, and you can subscribe

41:34

to our show on the iHeart

41:36

Radio app, or wherever you like being your podcasts.

41:42

Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of

41:45

I heart Radio. For more podcasts

41:47

from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio

41:49

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41:51

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