Unearthed! in Autumn 2025, Part 1

Part one of this quarter's installment of Unearthed! features things related to books and letters, and edibles and potables, and as we usually do, we are starting this installment of Unearthed with updates.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:32Holly Frey?

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• 1:03Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:04Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:14Tracy V. Wilson?

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

• 2:18Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  It is time for Unearthed this week. This is when we talk about the things that have been literally and figuratively unearthed over the last few months. Things we've been doing regularly for many years now, but we know there are new listeners coming into the show all the time. So today, we have some things that are related to books and letters and edibles and potables. And as we so often do, we are starting this installment of Unearthed with updates. And for the third time in a row, we are having to start the updates with the ongoing federal assault on history and related fields.

• 2:56Holly Frey?

  So in July, Boston Public Television Station GBH announced that it had laid off 13 employees who worked on the US history-focused documentary series, American Experience. This was in the wake of the clawback of public media funding that we talked about previously on Unearthed and was in addition to other layoffs that had already taken place at the station. GBH announced that the 2025 season of American Experience would be abbreviated as a result of the budget and staffing cuts, and that future production on the series had stopped. Since its inception, American Experience has produced close to 400 history documentaries,

• 3:36Holly Frey?

  many of them award-winning, including earning 14 Peabody Awards, 10 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, and 12 Primetime Emmys.

• 3:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  A whole lot has happened this year, and this is one of the things that, when I saw the headline about it, I immediately burst into tears. Here is a probably incomplete list of episodes in which Holly or I have cited an American Experience documentary or something from its associated website in no particular order.

• 4:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Paramount Decrees of 1948, the first transatlantic telegraph cable, the motherhood of Mamie Till Mobley, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Boxer Rebellion, A. Philip Randolph, Hernandez versus Texas, Eugene Jacques Bullard, the Zoot Suit Riots, S.A. Andre's North Pole Balloon Mission, Buck versus Bell, Orphan Trains, Catherine Dexter McCormick, the Nelson Pill Hearings, Grand Central Station, the Haymarket Riot, Hedda Hopper, Mary McLeod Bethune, Henry Louis Sullivan, Mississippi Freedom Summer, Etienne Cabaye and the Utopia of Icaria, roller coasters, Alabama Governor George Wallace, and four paperclippers, which was on four people

• 4:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  brought to the United States from Nazi Germany under a secret program that was known as Operation Paperclip.

• 4:55Holly Frey?

  We have also previously talked about the executive branch's focus on Smithsonian museums, including discussions of executive orders that were issued earlier this year, and our recent episode on Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, which was inspired by an article on the White House website that criticized the Smithsonian. In August, the White House sent a letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonny G. Bunch III with the subject line "Internal Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions and Materials." And that letter said in part, quote, "As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding, it is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story."

• 5:41Holly Frey?

  In this spirit, and in accordance with Executive Order 14253, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, we will be leading a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions. This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.

• 6:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  From there, the letter requested that the Smithsonian provide information on 250th anniversary programming, current exhibition content, traveling and upcoming exhibitions, internal guidelines and governance, an index of the permanent collection, educational materials, the digital presence, external partnerships, grant-related documentation, and surveys and other evaluations of visitor experience to a team at the executive branch. This request currently applies to eight museums, with the other museums expected to be included in a later phase. The letter included timelines and next steps, including that within 120 days, quote, "Museums

• 6:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  should begin implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically-driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials." The letter ended, quote, "We view this process as a collaborative and forward-looking opportunity, one that empowers museum staff to embrace a revitalized curatorial vision rooted in the strength, breadth, and achievements of the American story. By focusing on Americanism, the people, principles, and progress that define our nation, we can

• 7:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  work together to renew the Smithsonian's role as the world's leading museum institution."

• 7:39Holly Frey?

  What that letter describes doesn't really read like a collaborative process, though. It reads like Smithsonian museums submitting an enormous amount of material with interviews with curators and staff that are described as voluntary, followed by the museums getting corrections from the executive branch that are expected to be implemented. There is no indication of whether those corrections will be coming from someone with experience or expertise in history, museum curation, or any related field. Also, Americanism and American exceptionalism are ideologies, and the idea that history should be unifying and constructive is ideologically driven.

• 8:22Holly Frey?

  So it's not so much removing ideology from the Smithsonian, but following an ideology that the executive branch approves of.

• 8:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  This letter also has to be read in the context of statements from the President of the United States, such as this one that was posted on Truth Social on August 19th, parts of which are in all caps, quote, "The Smithsonian is out of control where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been. Nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the museums and start the exact same process that has been done with colleges and universities where tremendous progress has been made.

• 9:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  This country cannot be woke because woke is broke. We have the hottest country in the world, and we want people to talk about it, including in our museums."

• 9:24Holly Frey?

  A thousand blessings on Tracy for arranging this outline so that I did not have to read that, because I don't know what I would have done. This letter has raised a lot of the same concerns as earlier communications that were sent to the federal land bureaus, including the National Park Service, saying that they need to restore federal sites dedicated to history to a, quote, "solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing." We talked about those communications in earlier installments of Unearth this year, and about

• 10:05Holly Frey?

  concerns that this kind of focus is going to sanitize and whitewash the history that is presented to the public. And this also applies to the Smithsonian.

• 10:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Beyond that, the Smithsonian is not an executive branch agency.

• 10:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  It was founded in 1846 as an autonomous institution. It's governed as a federal trust with a 17-member panel of regents, and historically, it has not been subject to direct control by the executive branch or the president in this way. So, curators and archivists and historians have all expressed a lot of alarm, both at the idea that the Smithsonian should, quote, "celebrate American exceptionalism," which, again, is an ideology, and at the overreach that's involved with this effort from the White House.

• 10:54Holly Frey?

  This review of the Smithsonian sparked the creation of Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, an all-volunteer effort to document everything that is currently on display at Smithsonian museums. So, the eight museums that are part of this initial phase of the review, as well as 13 others, and the National Zoo and the US Holocaust Memorial. In its first five weeks of existence, this effort documented more than half of the current Smithsonian exhibits. That's a lot of work. There's more information about this at citizenhistorians.org.

• 11:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  There is also a teach-in in defense of history and museums planned for sunup to sundown on Sunday, October 26th, on the National Mall. One of the organizers of that is past guest and friend of the show Nate DeMaio, host of The Memory Palace. There's more information on this at linktree.com/historyteachin. Also, on top of everything that we've just talked about, the Department of Education made various announcements about prioritizing, quote, "patriotic education in public schools." And that has a lot of the same themes as we've been talking about with things like public broadcasting in the Smithsonian. But those announcements also have multiple additional layers that I just was not able

• 12:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  to fully sort through to really articulate in time to feel like I could speak knowledgeably about it for this episode. So, I guess, having acknowledged that that also exists, we can take a quick sponsor break.

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• 13:01Speaker 04

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• 13:03Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:24Speaker 04

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• 13:31Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:38Speaker 05

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• 13:44Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:55Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:02Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:44Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 15:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends

• 15:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Continuing with the updates on today's episode, prior hosts of the show did an episode on the illuminated manuscript known as the Book of Kells in March of 2010. The Book of Kells is an illuminated account of the four Gospels of the Christian Bible, so the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And there is some debate about exactly where this manuscript was created. The most common arguments are either that it started on the island of Iona in western Scotland before being taken to Kells after a Viking raid, or that it was created entirely at Kells. According to an article published in The Guardian, research by Dr. Victoria Whitworth suggests that it's neither of those things,

• 16:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  but that this is a pictish document that was started northeast of Inverness in eastern Scotland.

• 17:04Holly Frey?

  According to Whitworth, a monastery in Port Mahomic Easter Ross was home to monks who made the type of vellum that was used in the book and who created carvings that are a stylistic match to the Book of Kells. Inscriptions in Iona, on the other hand, were more focused on legibility.

• 17:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  This isn't the first time someone has proposed a pictish origin for the Book of Kells, and it's kind of difficult for us to really evaluate this claim at this point. The details of Whitworth's research are in a book called The Book of Kells: Unlocking the Enigma, which came out on October 9th. That is before this episode is airing, but it was after, it's after the episode was researched and written. We are recording this two days before the book comes out. If this argument holds up, though, it could have a major impact on the understanding of history and illuminated manuscripts in this part of the world, since no pictish manuscripts are known to have survived today.

• 18:06Holly Frey?

  Next, research published in the journal Nature Communications in July has examined the DNA of 47 people whose remains were found in the eastern Italian Alps. These people lived between about 6380 and 1295 BCE, and that would make them neighbors of Utsi the Iceman, at least relatively speaking. Utsi died in the region sometime around 3350 to 3105 BCE. And Utsi is, of course, the subject of a full episode of the show. He has made many appearances on unearth, and previous research into his DNA showed that he was most closely related to Neolithic farmers in Anatolia in what is now Turkey.

• 18:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this research wanted to explore the question of whether Utsi was an outlier or whether other people who were in the eastern Italian Alps thousands of years ago had similar geographic origins and ancestry. According to their findings, these people did share between 80% and 90% of their ancestry with Neolithic Anatolian farmers, so that was similar to Utsi. And like Utsi, they also probably had dark hair and brown eyes, and they were probably all lactose intolerant.

• 19:22Holly Frey?

  At the same time, there were some differences between Utzi's DNA and that of most of the people whose DNA was part of this study. Many of the male remains in the study had paternal ancestry that came from what's now Germany and France, while Utzi's paternal ancestry traces to a broader geographic region. Utzi's maternal lineage also seems different from both modern people and the group analyzed in this study. It's not clear whether he was related to a population on his mother's side that has since died out, or if there is some other explanation for this.

• 19:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  For this installment's update on Pompeii, which has also come up unearthed a lot, research at the site suggests that some people returned to the city after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. These were probably people who survived the eruption but just had nowhere else to go and no money or resources to try to resettle somewhere else. There is evidence that people who came back to Pompeii lived in the upper levels of buildings that were not completely buried in ash, and that they built shelters and cellars and more sheltered areas in the lower levels of those buildings, kind of clearing them out, and also dug into the ash deposits to look for things that they could make use

• 20:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  of.

• 20:45Holly Frey?

  At first, this would have been kind of a dirty dusty existence, but it didn't take long for plant life to flourish in the volcanic debris. But this community would have had a very different existence from the Pompeii of prior to the eruption. Not just because of the physical destruction, but also because Pompeii had been a structured Roman city. Emperor Titus, who was emperor when the volcano erupted, did send two former consuls to try to refound the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but those efforts failed. Survivors who returned to the area would have been its poorest residents, and they were now living without any of the social or governmental structures that were typically part of Roman life.

• 21:29Holly Frey?

  A statement from the site's director describes it as a "precarious gray populated area, a kind of campsite with shacks sprouting up amongst the still recognizable ruins of the former city of Pompeii."

• 21:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's likely that this area was at least partially inhabited until the aftermath of another major eruption in the 5th century, at which point it's believed to have been abandoned.

• 21:57Holly Frey?

  We didn't have that many updates this time, relatively speaking, so now we're ready to move on to books and letters. In the 14th century, poet and writer Geoffrey Chaucer made references to a medieval poem known as the Song of Wade in two of his works, Troilus and Cressida in Canterbury Tales. Both times, he seemed to take for granted that his audience would know what he was referencing. It would be a little like someone today referencing one of Shakespeare's plays, or maybe King Arthur, or Robin Hood, and just taking for granted that the reader was going to get the connection.

• 22:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, there are people who would get the Song of Wade connection, but not like a general audience for the most part. While Chaucer's works have survived until today, the text of Song of Wade has not. In the 19th century, University of Cambridge medievalist M.R. James found the only known surviving fragment of it in a collection of Latin documents that dated back to the 12th and 13th centuries. This collection is known as Peterhouse Manuscript 255. The fragment of the poem was included in a sermon which also referenced Wade's story, so like the narrative of what happens in the poem. And like Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of this sermon seemed to just assume that the congregation would get it. Like, he didn't

• 23:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  need to explain who this was.

• 23:18Holly Frey?

  But this fragment was confusing. It was translated as referencing elves and adders and sprites. Later translators used slightly different language, like water monsters instead of sprites. But the references in the sermon and Chaucer's work didn't really make sense if the Song of Wade was a story involving fantastical or mythological creatures.

• 23:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  New research at the University of Cambridge suggests that people have been reading this work incorrectly for centuries, basically because of unclear handwriting.

• 23:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  The 12th century transcriber who copied this sermon was probably more familiar with reading and writing in the Latin of the sermon, rather than the Middle English of the poem that was being quoted. Middle English uses some letters that Latin does not, including "win," which represents a W sound and looks kind of like a P, and "thorn," which represents a TH sound and also looks kind of like a P. "Win" and "thorn" can also be written to look more like the letter "Y." It's a character that's evolved over centuries. And there's a dot written over "win" that's used to distinguish between these two letters.

• 24:34Holly Frey?

  So the idea is that either this scribe mixed up some of these letters, or was copying them from another document that didn't clearly distinguish among them, and consequently made a few mistakes that changed the words. By this reasoning, elves should have been wolves and sprites should have been sea snakes, which would have put the poem more in line of a Middle English romance grounded in ideas of chivalry, instead of a more fantastic work with roots in mythology. The biggest conflicts in such a poem would have been among human beings, not between humans and mythological beings or monsters.

• 25:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  As happens so often in Unearthed, a lot of the writing about this has described it as like conclusively cracking a 130-year-old mystery, when it's really more like it is offering a different interpretation and potential explanation of what's going on with this text. And that, uh, that kind of broad language includes things like press releases from the University of Cambridge about the research.

• 25:39Holly Frey?

  Research published in the journal Arak has translated a fragment of a cuneiform tablet, revealing a previously unrecorded Sumerian myth. The tablet was excavated back in the 19th century, and an image of it was used on the dust jacket of a book called From the Tablets of Sumer: 25 Firsts in Man's Recorded History. But it wasn't translated for the book, and it hasn't been thoroughly studied before now.

• 26:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  It was basically on the dust jacket and like on an interior picture, because it was a striking-looking tablet covered in letters that was pretty evocative, but they did not look at what it actually said. So now that people have, this seems to tell the story of the Sumerian storm god, Iskhar. Iskhar is held captive in the netherworld, or kher, which leads to a drought. Iskhar's father, the king of the gods, summons the divine pantheon to decide who is going to go to Iskhar's rescue. And when none of the other gods want to go, Fox goes in their place. The tablet starts to describe Fox's adventures on this quest, but the end of

• 26:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  the story is missing because the tablet's broken. It seems like it would probably end with Fox successfully rescuing Iskhar, but we don't really know. We're kind of guessing logically what would happen next.

• 27:02Holly Frey?

  That's us presuming a happy ending. Maybe it's like a European film. It just is.

• 27:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Maybe.

• 27:08Holly Frey?

  This is a story that seems to have similarities to other myths involving seasons, floods, and changes in weather. It starts with images of rivers and canals filled with fish before Iskhar's capture changes all of that. And it also features Fox as a sly, cunning character, which is also a theme in other mythology.

• 27:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  We will take a sponsor break and then get to lots of finds related to food and drink.

• 27:37Speaker 01

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• 28:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesse have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything. That shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only

• 28:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 29:07Speaker 06

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• 31:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  I always love all of our unearthed finds that are related to food and drink. And I think my favorite ones are when actual remnants of food are found at historical and archaeological sites. This time though, we have more research that's more about food rather than actual food items. First, archaeologists in China have found ancient wooden tools at a site that is roughly 300,000 years old. It is incredibly unusual to find wooden tools that are that old. And these only survived until today because they were in layers of low oxygen sediment that was mostly clay. So that helped preserve them.

• 32:01Holly Frey?

  These tools were likely used for cutting, grinding and digging. And the site where they were found also contained evidence of an assortment of foods, pine nuts and hazelnuts, various fruits, herbs and ferns. There was also evidence of edible aquatic plants. So these wooden tools were likely used for both harvesting and processing an array of foods. Or if your mind is like me, muddling a cocktail.

• 32:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  That too.

• 32:28Holly Frey?

  The use of those herbs to make something delicious.

• 32:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  This find is the earliest known use of purpose made digging sticks in what is now southern China and the surrounding areas. And it's also the earliest evidence of underground plant parts like roots and tubers being used as food. The tools are also so old that they date back to before Homo sapiens were known to be in this part of Asia. So it's possible that they were made and used by Denisovians or by Homo erectus or by some other early hominin.

• 33:06Holly Frey?

  On a somewhat similar note, research at two caves near the Mediterranean Sea that were used by Neanderthals suggests that each group had its own distinct practices for butchering animals and preparing meat. The two caves are only about 45 miles apart and were occupied at roughly the same time during the Middle Paleolithic period.

• 33:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  This research involved examining almost 350 bone fragments, and they had distinctly different cut marks at each of these two caves. The differences have been described as the groups having different family recipes or having different traditions around food.

• 33:47Holly Frey?

  It's also just possible that the two groups had different preferences on what kinds of meat to eat. One cave had more bones that came from larger animals, although that could also mean that the group from the other cave butchered larger animals somewhere else rather than at the cave. So this research suggests that Neanderthal society was more complex and varied than we might imagine today.

• 34:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  I can't remember if it was in this, uh, this find or something else, because I think there's, there's more than one Neanderthal thing this time, but, um, one of them had a subhead in the text of the article that was something like "Neanderthals, colon, not dummies."

• 34:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Which is a recurring theme on the kinds of Neanderthal things we talk about on Unearthed. Keeping with this ancient food thing, research in Shandong, China have found charred adzuki beans dating back to 8,000 to 9,000 years ago, meaning those were being grown and used in the Yellow River region at least 4,000 years earlier than was previously thought.

• 34:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Azuki beans are a nutritious food and they also have nitrogen fixing properties that helps enrich the soil.

• 35:02Holly Frey?

  This research was part of a larger study that looked at how these beans were used at sites in China, Japan, and South Korea. Another finding involved significant differences in how large the beans were and how they were used. These findings suggest that these beans were domesticated at several different places in parallel, rather than having one variety of bean plant that was domesticated in one place and then spread out from that point. I'm laughing because I'm like, in my garden, some plants make big beans and some plants just kind of peter out.

• 35:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sure, sure. There were trends among the beans.

• 35:39Holly Frey?

  Yes. It's just like, maybe one of them is just a really bad gardener.

• 35:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Continuing on with our plant-based food, researchers working in the Canary Islands have studied the DNA of lentils that were placed in storage silos there more than 1,000 years ago. The indigenous people on the islands created these silos by digging down into the volcanic bedrock and some of the seeds that are still in there are extremely well-preserved.

• 36:11Holly Frey?

  When Europeans arrived in the Canary Islands in the 1300s, they described their inhabitants' farming methods, but they didn't mention lentils. Spain ultimately colonized the islands in the 15th century and a lot of the indigenous population and knowledge were lost through conquest and genocide, but by that time, lentils were being grown there. So the question was, when and how did the lentils arrive there? Did they predate those 14th century accounts? Or were they introduced afterward?

• 36:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this genetic research and other parts of this suggest that the Canary Islands indigenous peoples brought lentils from northern Africa roughly 2,000 years ago, so long before the arrival of Europeans, and that the same types of lentils have been cultivated on these islands ever since. The particular lentil variety that they were studying is also really well-adapted to a hot and dry climate, and that is something researchers say could be useful as the Earth's climate continues to get warmer due to climate change.

• 37:20Holly Frey?

  Other food DNA research has looked into the question of whether DNA can help researchers figure out what kinds of fish people were eating in the ancient world, even when the fish were heavily processed. We have talked about the use of food residues on pots to figure out what those pots contain, so this isn't like a totally new idea. But this study involved Roman fish fermentation vats that were used to make a paste called garum. In addition to being fermented, these fish were salted and crushed, so it's extremely rare for archaeologists to find a recognizable sample that could conclusively point to one specific type of fish.

• 38:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Researchers were able to extract DNA from residue at a site in what's now Spain, which they compared to DNA from modern sardines. And they confirmed that what they were looking at in this paste residue was from sardines, and that it was genetically similar to today's sardines from the same part of the world. At the same time, the researchers stressed that this is not a perfect technique. The process of creating these kinds of fish pastes can still mean that there is just no usable DNA left and residues that survive until today. So it worked this time, might not always work.

• 38:40Holly Frey?

  This may have been a fluke. Research on samples from the Levant region and northern Mesopotamia has examined seed and wood samples from grape and olive plants that date back to between 5,000 and 2,600 years ago. Researchers used carbon isotope analysis to assess how much water these plants had available when they were growing. During the earlier part of that time span, evidence of water stress lined up with seasonal variations in average moisture and rainfall. But in later samples, a different pattern emerged. There was a wider range in the periods of water stress, and evidence of plants being grown in places that were not as well suited to them, requiring more irrigation.

• 39:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Grape plants in particular were increasingly grown in areas that required extra water. So researchers concluded that this suggests grapes and the wines that were made from them had a particularly high economic value, more so than olives and olive oil, because otherwise, people would not have bothered to put in the effort to grow them in places where it was harder to do so. The press release headline on this boiled it down to, quote, "Bronze and Iron Age cultures in the Middle East were committed to wine production."

• 39:59Holly Frey?

  We've finally gotten to a couple of finds that involve the discovery of an actual food substance. For this first one, we got a tip from our listener, Tom. It's bottles containing lactic acid bacteria cultures found in a basement under greenhouses at the University of Copenhagen. Lactic acid can extend the shelf life of cheeses, butter, and other dairy products, and these bottles dated back to the late 1800s.

• 40:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  DNA research confirmed that the bottles' contents still matched up with what was on their labels, and these strains of lactic acid cultures match ones that were used in Danish dairies after the introduction of pasteurization. That's heat treating milk and other foods to kill pathogenic bacteria. These cultures were probably used as part of butter production.

• 40:51Holly Frey?

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, researchers also found evidence of contamination from other bacteria in these samples, including pathogenic bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus and Vibrio furnici.

• 41:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Please do not taste these cultures.

• 41:07Holly Frey?

  Don't eat bog butter.

• 41:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Might make you sick. The other actual food substance is a sticky residue from bronze vessels at a shrine in southern Italy. These vessels were discovered in 1954 and a series of tests carried out in the years since then had been inconclusive. Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum received some of the residue in 2019 and they've concluded that it is nearly identical to today's beeswax and honey, although with a higher acidity level because it's basically been in storage for about 2,500 years. They also found some proteins similar to royal jelly.

• 41:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  It didn't obviously look like any of these things just by looking at it because it was so old, but that's where we seem to have landed.

• 41:58Holly Frey?

  And our last food is more food adjacent, but Tracy just found it charming and there is no better reason for inclusion, in my opinion. It's a pottery vessel found in what is now Tajikistan, dating back to between the first century BCE and the third century CE, when the Khushan Empire controlled the area. It had an inscription in the Bactrian language which reads, "This water jug belongs to the woman Sagkina." This jug was broken when archaeologists found it and some of the pieces are missing, but all of the pieces containing parts of the inscription are there. Inscriptions in this language are very rare in what is now Tajikistan, so this is a very great find.

• 42:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I just like the idea that somebody basically wrote their name on their water jug because they were tired of people taking it from the well without asking or whatever. Uh, but before we close out today's installment of Unearthed, I wanted to talk about a paper that is connected to like the research that goes into these episodes and then the episodes that we produce as a result. I have talked before about how it can be challenging to feel like we are covering finds from all over the world because we're dependent on what's being published and publicized and covered in English language media. So this paper, which was published in the journal Science Advances in July, is called

• 43:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  "Regional Disparities in US Media Coverage of Archaeology Research," and it is about what kinds of peer-reviewed papers wind up being covered as popular science news.

• 43:36Holly Frey?

  Overwhelmingly, the general public learns about archaeology research from news sources, or maybe from our podcast, and not directly from the peer-reviewed journals where it's published. But there's a big gap between popular science news and peer-reviewed journals. Some of this is really to be expected, since what is newsworthy to a general audience is not necessarily the same as what's notable from a scientific perspective. At the same time, there are editorial decisions and judgment calls about what to cover.

• 44:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  So, this paper looked at how what's published in journals compares to what is covered in mainstream news reporting. The researchers surveyed archaeology papers published in seven peer-reviewed journals. Those were Antiquity, Science, Nature, Science Advances, Nature Communications, Scientific Reports, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They also collected metrics on all of these publications, and they noted whether press releases about the archaeology papers were published on Eureka Alert, which is a news release platform. They also looked at whether each paper got coverage in 15

• 44:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  different major US media outlets and news aggregators. So, those peer-reviewed journals, I feel like every one of them has been cited repeatedly on Unearthed, and Eureka Alert, and major US media outlets. They are all part of what goes into creating our Unearthed episodes.

• 45:10Holly Frey?

  This paper has a lot of math and statistics. Its authors found that, relatively speaking, articles about North America were twice as likely to have a press release on Eureka Alert than articles about Asia. And across the board, news outlets covered articles with a press release at Eureka Alert far more often than they covered ones that did not. Paleolithic archaeology articles were also covered more often than archaeology about more recent periods, possibly because people interpret paleolithic findings as universal regardless of where the research takes place.

• 45:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  One of this paper's overall conclusions was that papers about archaeology in the United Kingdom, Israel and Palestine, and Australia were all more likely to be covered in US popular publications than papers about archaeology in China and Taiwan.

• 46:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Asia was the geographic region least likely to receive news coverage, even though the greatest numbers of papers were about China or Taiwan. The authors concluded that these disparities reflect an anti-Chinese bias and the false notion that only history related to, quote, "white Judeo-Christian paths" is relevant to people in the United States today. So after working on unearthed episodes for more than a decade and just really immersing myself in both peer-reviewed papers and the news coverage of them multiple times a year for all of that time, these trends are really apparent.

• 46:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, we talked so much about, like, early human history, Paleolithic era stuff today compared to things that are more recent. Geographic trends are also really apparent. This paper wasn't really focused on Africa, but some of these same things also apply to archaeological research in Africa. These trends totally make their way into our show, as I just said. It's absolutely true that editors' decisions are influenced by their own biases and by their perceptions of what will be relevant to their audiences. All people have biases, and these biases are still there when we are consciously

• 47:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  trying to be aware of them and, you know, not fall into that same pattern. This is not in any way a criticism of the paper, but in my experience, I do think the news releases on Eureka Alert play an even bigger role in these patterns than the paper suggests. It's not just a yes or no checkbox about whether there is a press release. A press release on Eureka Alert is typically written to be accessible to a general audience, which peer-reviewed papers and academic journals often are not. The press releases also signal that there is a media contact who is prepared to answer questions about the research and give quotes to reporters.

• 48:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  And that person's contact information is right there on the press release, so it's easy to find. Overwhelmingly, when I'm working on these episodes and there is an archaeology story that gets just a ton of coverage in lots of different publications with lots of perspectives and lots of different quotes from archaeologists or the lead authors of the papers, it's overwhelmingly something that also has a press release on Eureka Alert. Or if not, it is coming from a university or another institution that has dedicated PR and media relations people on staff who are doing outreach and promoting the work of their faculty and staff. Additionally, some of the countries that the paper showed as getting proportionally

• 48:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  more news coverage are also countries that intentionally use archaeological research as a PR and international publicity effort. And so that includes Egypt and Israel. So this paper was published as open access. Anyone can read it. And I mostly wanted to say, yeah, this really aligns with my observations. It includes trends that I try to be aware of and should try to take into account and as much as possible, kind of undermine when I'm working on these episodes. Again, it is called Regional Disparities in U.S. Media Coverage of Archaeology Research, and it was published in the journal Science Advances

• 49:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  in July. And that concludes part one of Unearthed.

• 49:46Holly Frey?

  I'll have a question about this on Friday.

• 49:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I'm sure we can talk more about it on Friday.

• 49:51Holly Frey?

  Do you have listener mail in the meantime?

• 49:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  I do have listener mail in the meantime. This email is actually from back in July, and I accidentally skipped it when I was reading things. It has come from Megan, and Megan wrote, "Hi, Tracy and Holly. I've been listening to stuff you missed in history class for the past 10 years or so. Thank you for the hours of education and entertainment. I really enjoyed your recent episode about Wilfred Owen and wanted to recommend one of my favorite books, actually, the first of a trilogy, Regeneration by Pat Barker. It's a fictionalized account of Owen Sassoon and their contemporaries at Craig Lockhart." Heart Hospital, under the care of W H R Rivers.

• 50:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Fun fact, the R in Rivers's middle initials also stands for Rivers. The novel is powerful, haunting, and will stay with you for a long time. I like to reread the books that have affected me the most, especially so I can revisit them and relate to them at different stages of my own life. On your recommendation, I read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, which was good timing since I got COVID last month and I felt like I had the plague. I'm sure I will come back to it in the future at Christmas time. Listening to your episode about Wilford Owen made me realize that I haven't reread the regeneration trilogy since I started my current job almost six years ago. I'm a psychologist for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs in North Carolina.

• 51:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Working in mental health at the VA has allowed me to bear witness to generations of trauma from veterans who served in conflicts dating back to World War II and Korea, to those who faced violence and discrimination related to their race or sexual orientation, to those who have experienced military sexual trauma. When you discussed Rivers's treatments for shell shock at Craig Lockhart, it struck me that he was remarkably insightful about how to work with PTSD. The evidence-based psychotherapies we use today are also based in helping veterans retell their stories of trauma, exposing themselves in a safe environment to painful memories and emotions. I often use written exposure therapy, which is directly related to the writing therapy at Craig Lockhart.

• 52:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thank you for reminding me that it's time for a regeneration read. For pet tax, here are some pictures of my boys, Minnow and Tibby. They are littermates, 12 years old, and have the biggest personalities of any cat I have ever known. Tibby is the one lying on his back like he owns the place, and Minnow is on my lap. The picture of them on the beams of my parents' ceiling shows Minnow's distinguishing quirk. He always holds his tail in a curly cube or loop over his back like a chow. Tibby's formal name is Tybalt, after Shakespeare's Tybalt Capulet and Tibbert the Cat from medieval Ranard stories. Like his namesakes, he's smart and strong-willed and can sometimes have a bit of a temper when he doesn't get his way.

• 52:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  But he's also a sweetheart and sleeps cuddled next to me every night, although he snores. Minnow's name is really Minnolouche after the poem "The Cat on the Moon" by Yeats. It's about a cat named Black Minnolouche who dances under the moon. "My minnow also dances, wanders, and wails at night," although he is an indoor cat. "But Minnow has the most joie de vivre of any creature I've ever met. I don't know when I gave him the name as a kitten, just how apt it would be. He really does dance." Thank you for letting me share my book, war, and cat stories. The work you do helps me make sense of the world and keeps me going through the hard times best. Megan, thank you so much, Megan, for this email.

• 53:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  I don't think I had heard of the regeneration trilogy, and I am intrigued. And thanks for also talking about your experience at the VA. There's a paragraph that I skipped over that talked about how that is a rough moment right now, and I hope you are doing as well as possible and that things are going as well as possible for you. And then we have adorable pictures of black cats. Yay! And I love black cats. I have two of them. They're also littermates, and they are the best. I have a curly-cue tail cat, except her curly-cue is often in the opposite direction.

• 54:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  So instead of going up and over her back, it goes up and over the opposite way and makes a little spiral. It is very cute. So, thank you again for this email. Megan, if you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we are at [email protected]. And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.

• 54:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:49Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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