Unearthed! in October 2026, Part 2

Part two of the autumn 2026 edition of Unearthed! kicks off with the catch-all potpourri category, then covers edibles and potables, shipwrecks, art, and Halloween-appropriate topics.

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

• 0:00Holly Frey?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. 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 Argonix, listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 1:08Holly Frey?

  We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Old Gaze are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Veeve Healthcare. 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 into Silver Linings with The Old Gaze on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:07Speaker 05

  Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new chicken nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces, and they created a brand new one. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.

• 2:37Holly Frey?

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

• 2:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. This is part two of our latest installment of Unearthed. This time, we have all of the edibles and potables, another of my favorite categories. We have lots of shipwrecks. Unlike last time, we have art to talk about. I know that will please Holly. Since it is October, we will also finish the episode with a few things that feel just a little bit Halloweeny. And as always, we will start with some things that seemed cool to me but did not really fit in a category, which is what I always call the potpourri.

• 3:24Holly Frey?

  So first, it is possible that the remains of another British monarch could be found under a car park. This time, it's Saxon King Alfred the Great, who died in 899 and was one of the figures who was part of the eventual creation of England as a unified nation. Alfred was originally buried at Winchester Cathedral, and his remains were moved at several points after that, including in the 19th century, when antiquarian John Mellor said he excavated the bones from what had been the site of Hyde Abbey. The abbey had been disbanded during the dissolution of the monasteries and had later become home to a prison and a workhouse.

• 4:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, these remains really went on a whole journey.

• 4:09Holly Frey?

  They're better traveled than many humans.

• 4:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, which is a little gruesome. Mellor said that he reburied the bones at St. Bartholomew's Church, but archaeological work there in 2013 revealed that the bones at that site belonged to at least six different people, all of whom died at least 200 years after Alfred. Now, author Graham Phillips claims to have found a journal article published in 1800, so before the exhumation and reburial that was reportedly done by John Mellor, that detailed the exhumation of the bones when the prison was built at the former site

• 4:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  of Hyde Abbey. And this article included a map of where the bones were reburied, which is now the site of a car park.

• 5:03Holly Frey?

  This is not in any way conclusive. The University of Winchester, which has spearheaded a project to find Alfred's remains, has not commented on it, and no further study has been done at the proposed site.

• 5:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next, the earliest known moving picture of a total solar eclipse has been found and restored. It was rediscovered in the collection of the Royal Astronomical Society, and then painstakingly pieced back together and restored by the British Film Institute. This was filmed in North Carolina by filmmaker Neville Mascoline on May 28, 1900, and it is available to be viewed on YouTube.

• 5:45Holly Frey?

  And lastly, in potpourri, authorities in Greece have announced that archaeologists working at the site, the Royal Gymnasium of Meiza, have found an ornately decorated room that may have been the school where Alexander the Great studied under Aristotle. Plutarch's biography of Alexander says that he studied at a school that was built by Philip I, Alexander's father, in the Meiza complex. Other work at the complex has previously unearthed a wrestling ring, a stadium, and a covered running track.

• 6:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Now, we will move on to several things that fall under the umbrella of edibles and potables. First, researchers working with the permission of the Muskogee Nation have analyzed residues from pieces of pottery found at Etowah Mounds in the US state of Georgia. They found what may be the earliest evidence of the presence of cacao east of the Mississippi River. These fragments date back to about the 11th century, and they were found in a borrow pit. Those are clay mines that Mississippian peoples used to get the clay to build the mounds, and then they would fill those mines back in with other dirt and soil and refuse.

• 7:02Holly Frey?

  In this case, the refuse included remains from a feast, including the pottery that apparently contained some preparation of chocolate, based on the presence of four compounds found in cacao, including caffeine. At first, it was not 100% certain that this was chocolate, though. It was possible that it was euphonol, which also contains caffeine and is known to have been consumed as a tea. But additional DNA research detected the presence of cacao DNA on two of the pottery fragments.

• 7:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's not clear exactly how the cacao would have made its way to Georgia from what is now southern Mexico, which is the closest place it is known to have grown at the time. But this does suggest very long-distance trading relationships between the Mississippian peoples and those in other parts of North America and Mesoamerica.

• 7:58Holly Frey?

  Several studies were published over the past few months that looked at what people of the past ate, and what that had to do with their social or economic class. Researchers in Italy used isotopic analysis to study human remains and determine what people who were buried in the Novara Necropolis were eating 2,700 years ago. This study revealed that there were patterns based on sex. Men seemed to have more access to animal protein than women did. But even with those differences, most people had a diet that was primarily based on cereals, not animal meat. And that was the case regardless of what a person's social status seemed to be, based on how they were buried.

• 8:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Another study looked at how common people lived in pre-modern Osaka, Japan, by studying the dental calculus from the remains of eight people. I tried to figure out exactly what years they meant by saying "pre-modern Osaka, Japan," and that was not in the reporting or the abstract, and I did not find access to the whole paper. So they found evidence of 38 different dietary proteins from 17 different taxa, including nine fish taxa, suggesting that common people had access to really diverse types of food. Six of

• 9:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  the eight people had proteins from red seabream, which written records from the time describe as a luxury item. And some of them also had evidence of eating salmonids, which do not live in Osaka Bay. This was really a much richer assortment of food than might be imagined for people who were comparatively poor. Osaka had a reputation for being the kitchen of the realm, and that seems to have really translated to food access for the people living there, including common people.

• 9:55Holly Frey?

  Researchers in Brazil looked at molecular residues from more than 180 ceramic vessels to get an idea of what people were eating there in the 19th century. They found that indigenous African and Afro-descendant communities were likely to rely on marine food sources, while communities of German immigrants were more likely to eat foods that came from plants and land animals. They attributed these differences not just to cultural differences and preferences, but also to access to different types of food. Meat from land animals typically had to be purchased from markets, while people who did not have money could fish or gather shellfish.

• 10:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Moving on, scientists have discovered genetically distinct avocados growing in Nicaragua, suggesting that around 5,000 years ago, people who were migrating north from South America carried avocado seeds with them to plant when they arrived. These introduced avocados then hybridized with native varieties of the fruit. In addition to the genetic research into these plants, the team also spoke to farmers and gardeners about how they grow native varieties of avocado today.

• 11:11Holly Frey?

  These plants are genetically distinct from the ones that are commercially grown today, about 80% of which are Haas avocados. In addition to providing information about how these fruits were grown in the past, this research is important to documenting and preserving today's avocado diversity.

• 11:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  And now for one potable. Shipwreck divers found a sealed bottle of Guinness Extra Stout beer at the wreck of the Mandoor in the English Channel. The Mandoor sank on November 27, 1864, so the bottle and any beer inside would have been older than that. And these divers embarked on a plan to try to drink the beer, both by sending samples of it to a lab to test its safety and by having the DNA from the beer's yeast sequenced to try to brew a new beer with it. These efforts have involved a team from KU Lerven in Belgium, as well as the official

• 12:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guinness Archive in Dublin. As of this recording, there has not been an update on the result of either of those

• 12:22Holly Frey?

  efforts. The results came back, and it's just one page that says yuck. Don't do that. While you ponder that, we are going to take a quick sponsor break.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 12:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 13:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 13:14Speaker 12

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 13:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 13:23Speaker 12

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing. What the fans experience is incredible.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  It gave me a lot of pride.

• 13:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 13:37Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 14:22Holly Frey?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 14:29Speaker 11

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• 15:03Speaker 00

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• 15:33Speaker 09

  If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Amin, Alex Carr, Fei-Fei Li, Almar Lucky. Because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed.

• 16:06Speaker 06

  Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans?

• 16:23Speaker 04

  They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, whose imagination do we want to live in?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  Listen to The Builders on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  That last potable is kind of a segue into our next subject, which is shipwrecks. We have a lot of them. Some of them are shipwrecks we have talked about on the show before, so these are also doing double duty as updates. We did a two-part episode on Ernest Shackleton in 2022, and he has also appeared on various installments of Unearthed. That includes July of 2024, when the discovery of the wreckage of one of his ships, The Quest, was announced as having been found off the coast of Canada.

• 17:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Shackleton was not on The Quest when it sank. He had died in his bunk aboard the ship decades before it sank. He died in 1922 while attempting a voyage to Antarctica. And then The Quest remained in service after his death until it was wrecked in sea ice on May 5, 1962.

• 17:48Holly Frey?

  The research vessel that was used to spot the wreckage of The Quest back in 2024 was using side scanning sonar. Now, an expedition led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has captured the first close-up photographs of the wreck. One of the submersibles involved was the DSV Alvin, which was the first submersible to ever visit the Titanic.

• 18:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  This wreck is very damaged, and there are also fishing nets blocking the view of parts of it. But the team was able to see the bow, the deck, and some of the portholes, and the main mast, which has now fallen. This wreckage has also become home to a lot of aquatic life, including pink corals and several types of fish. The team surveyed and mapped the wreck and planned to make a digital 3D model of it.

• 18:42Holly Frey?

  This work was part of the 2026 Heroic Age Expedition, as a project to create comprehensive surveys of two shipwrecks connected to the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. The other ship, the Terranova, is off the coast of Greenland and was the last ship used by Robert Falcon Scott, someone that previous hosts of the show covered on an episode on The Race to the South Pole that came out in 2010. Similarly, Scott was not aboard the Terranova when it sank. The Royal Navy had acquired it after Scott's expedition aboard it, and it was scuttled after being damaged by sea ice in 1943.

• 19:23Holly Frey?

  The team also captured the first high-resolution images of the Terranova, creating a survey and map with plans for a digital model.

• 19:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  We also did a two-parter on the Batavia that came out in April of 2014. Research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports has looked at stone blocks, bricks, and ballast that were aboard the Batavia when it sank in 1629. The blocks and bricks were probably intended to be used at the Dutch East India Company's headquarters in Jakarta, but there are no longer written records of exactly where these blocks and bricks had come from.

• 20:05Holly Frey?

  Using geochemical techniques, the team determined that these materials, which looked visually similar, came from multiple quarries around Europe, not from a single quarry, as had been previously believed. Researchers analyzed microscopic zircon minerals and matched them to the stone from quarry regions in Germany. They found that the stones came from at least two different quarries before being combined into a shipment that was being transported to India. This paints a picture of a procurement and provisioning system that was sophisticated and complex, connecting regional quarry sites to transportation routes to the coast, and from there to the East India Company's colonies and other sites overseas.

• 20:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Moving on to shipwrecks we have not talked about before, at least not that I remember. Research published in the journal Antiquity in September has looked at cargo from the Danube River that was discovered in 2019. It is possible that this is material that was dumped into the river for some kind of ritual purpose, but the much more likely scenario is that it was lost during transit down the river in some kind of shipwreck. So we have the cargo, not the vessel it was on. They have identified this cargo as a collection of about 500 iron bars, something the archaeologists involved with the work described as a minor miracle, since typically that kind of cargo would

• 21:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  have been recovered at some point and probably taken to scrap dealers.

• 21:39Holly Frey?

  This iron is old, dating back to between the third and second centuries BCE. Combined, the bars weigh about 2,200 pounds, or a metric ton, and they've been described as providing enough iron to outfit an army with about 500 swords.

• 21:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Cargo from another shipwreck was discovered off the coast of Sweden in 2024, and it's now believed to have been gifts from the German Duchy of Nassau to Czar Alexander II of Russia. The vessel carrying these gifts likely sank shortly after the Crimean War in 1856 or 1857. The cargo included hundreds of bottles of champagne and naturally carbonated mineral water. One of those labeled with the word Nassau was mistaken for a bottle of rum from Nassau in the Caribbean when the wreck was first discovered, so it kind of put them off on the wrong track for a little bit. There were also porcelain dishes, scientific instruments, and rare meteorites on board.

• 22:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  This has been described as both a symbolic recognition of the return to peace in Europe after the war and of the relationship between Nassau and Russia.

• 22:53Holly Frey?

  A shipwreck was discovered off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea about a decade ago, and archaeologists have now announced what was aboard. This ship dates back to the seventh or eighth century and may have had a high ranking Byzantine official and his entourage on board when it sank. The ship was another one that was full of very valuable cargo, including gold jewelry, coins, and pottery, as well as a signet ring that may have belonged to the official. It's the largest collection of gold found in a Mediterranean shipwreck and a new source of information about the Byzantine Empire during these centuries.

• 23:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next, fissures tipped off authorities in Italy after spotting a shipwreck about three miles off the coast of Sicily. This site has now been investigated using underwater cameras, and it's believed to be a Roman shipwreck dating back about 2,100 years. It is full of amphora, which are believed to have been used to transport wine.

• 23:55Holly Frey?

  Archaeologists and other officials who have been quoted about this wreck have described it as a tremendously important archaeological discovery, with words like incredible and heart-stopping. But they haven't really specified what sets it apart from the various other Roman-era shipwrecks filled with amphora that we've talked about on Unearthed before. It's definitely something that can provide new information about things like trade networks and the goods they transported thousands of years ago, but it's not fully clear if this was just sort of excited hyperbole, or if there is something particularly unique about this one that just hasn't been disclosed yet.

• 24:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Or at least that I was not able to find. Why is this particular one so exciting? Because I feel like I have found lots of things about similar ships over the years. Our next shipwreck was found in a somewhat unusual location, the ceiling of a cellar in Constance, Germany. The cellar dates back to 1244, and at that time, it was typical for ships to be recycled once they were taken out of use. The timbers used to make them would be repurposed as building materials somewhere on land. But typically, the ships would be deconstructed first. In this case, a portion of the hull, almost completely intact, was used to

• 25:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  make the ceiling of this cellar. It measures more than 25 square meters and contains at least 19 planks and the wooden pegs that were used to connect

• 25:28Holly Frey?

  them. Listen, that's just efficiency. Don't take it apart, it's fine.

• 25:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  I agree. It's fine. Now the investigation is more efficient.

• 25:37Holly Frey?

  This find comes as authorities are searching nearby Lake Constance for shipwrecks as part of a project called Wrecks and Deep Sea. This discovery has given researchers the opportunity to study the remains of this ship without having to go underwater to do it. The ceiling seems to have been made from a flat-bottomed ship that was common in the Middle Ages, and it shows evidence of repairs, including an area where a damaged section was removed and replaced while the ship was still in use.

• 26:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next, a wreck spotted in 2025 has been identified as the HMS Tiger, which sank during a training exercise in 1908. It is not clear exactly what happened, but shortly after a flare was used to simulate a torpedo attack, the Tiger collided with another ship called the Berwick. The Tiger split into two pieces. One part sank almost instantly while the other sank about three minutes later, and only 22 of the 57 crew on board survived.

• 26:41Holly Frey?

  The wreck is south of the Isle of Wight. Divers visited the ship to confirm its identity and to try to gather evidence about the cause of the wreck. They found that the rudder's position and the positions of gauges suggest that the Tiger did not try to alter its course or reduce speed before colliding with the Berwick. But that still doesn't explain exactly why the two ships were in a position to collide. Divers left a memorial wreath at the wreck to honor the sailors who died when it sank.

• 27:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Lastly, for these shipwrecks, research published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology details a 400-year-old shipwreck found during survey work for an underwater gas pipeline. And divers were investigating some magnetic anomalies underwater in northern Germany. This had been detected ahead of the work on the pipeline, and when they went to see what was going on, they found shoe soles, a rusty anchor, and other evidence that there was a shipwreck down there. Over 12 days, a team completed 22 dives to try to bring as much material from the wreck up as they could, so that they could get as much as possible off the

• 27:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  ocean floor ahead of dredging operations for this pipeline.

• 27:59Holly Frey?

  Most of the hull had already decayed, but what's left shows a clinker-style vessel made with overlapping planks, nailed together and sealed with tar and animal hair. Based on study of the rings in remaining pieces of the hull, the trees used to build it were cut down between 1626 and 1639. Divers also found personal belongings from the crew, bones from the animals they ate while on board, tools, rope, barrel staves, and a hollow oak trunk that may have been used as a bilge pump. There's also a flat clay brick with holes through it in a block of oak wood, and it isn't entirely clear what that purpose of that item might have been.

• 28:44Holly Frey?

  Beyond that, we don't know the identity of the ship, where it was headed, where it came from, or why it sank.

• 28:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Now let's take another little sponsor break.

• 28:58Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 29:42Holly Frey?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 29:53Speaker 11

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• 30:23Speaker 10

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• 30:51Speaker 09

  If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being Control in that scenario.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Aminé, Alex Carr, Fei Fei Li, Palmer Lucky. Because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans?

• 31:41Speaker 04

  They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, whose imagination do we want to live in?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Listen to The Builders on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Now we will move on to all of the art. The Zhejiang Huashan rock art cultural landscape in southwestern China is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and researchers have been trying to figure out how the art in some of this area has lasted for as long as it's lasted. There's figurative artwork in more than 80 locations, spread across 162 miles or 260 kilometers. And this is in a region that sees frequent monsoons and typhoons, and it's very hot in the summertime. Yet the artwork on these exposed river cliffs has lasted for at least 2,000 years and has remained a very vibrant red.

• 32:54Holly Frey?

  According to research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the reason may be that the paint contains a binder made of lime mortar mixed with blood. The team made this determination by using scanning electron microscopy to analyze fragments of paint-covered rock that had fallen from the cliffs. The red pigment was made with local clay that contained microscopic particles of iron oxide. Those microscopic pigment particles were encased in this lime blood mortar.

• 33:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  It is possible that this mortar had both a practical and a religious purpose. The mix of lime and blood created a natural hardener that tightly bound the pigment to the rock face. Tests have also detected serum proteins that suggest that at least some of the blood came from women who had given birth, was possibly collected during and after the childbirth process, and that might have had a symbolic or a spiritual connotation, or a connection to the matrilineal structure of the society that created this art. Some of the blood also seems to be non-human animal blood.

• 34:06Holly Frey?

  In other rock art news, Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory is home to exceptionally large paintings of rainbow serpents and other ancestral beings, as well as humans and animals. Researchers from Griffith University have worked with a senior Amurak traditional owner to study and record 165 rock art sites. And they've come to the conclusion that these very large paintings are a response to the cultural change that followed Europeans arriving in the area.

• 34:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Many of these paintings can't be radiocarbon dated, both because of the makeup of the pigments that were used to create them and the fact that a lot of these artworks are layered over other older images. So even if there is the organic material there that could be tested, it's hard to tell whether that's part of the most recent artwork or something older. But the available evidence, which includes information from traditional stories and indigenous traditions, is that these were created in the post-contact era. The rainbow serpents in particular are connected to change, including creation and destruction. The overall conclusion is that these artworks were created in an effort

• 35:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  for indigenous people in the area to retain a sense of control over their land and cultures and traditions in the face of European colonization.

• 35:32Holly Frey?

  This research was published in an open access article in the journal Australian Archaeology called Paintings of Rainbow Serpents and Other Big Creatures of Awun Barne, Northern Territory, Australia. This paper also contains more information about the artwork and their meanings in context.

• 35:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Moving on, conservators have restored the image of a soldier holding a vessel of beer to a painting by Dutch Golden Age artist Peter de Huyck. The painting, minus the soldier, has been known as Man Smoking and a Woman Drinking in a Courtyard. It depicts exactly that, along with a child in a dress carrying a bull in the lower right corner of the image. But when this painting was originally created, which was sometime between 1658 and 1660, there was also a soldier shown. That soldier was removed at some point, although his beer vessel and his pipe remained there in the painting. It's not fully clear why this happened, but there's some speculation

• 36:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  that whenever it did, having a soldier there was just considered to be too much debauchery for one artwork. Because with the soldier there, what was being depicted was that they were all playing a drinking game.

• 36:51Holly Frey?

  This wasn't a case where the image had been painted over and conservators could just remove the added paint. The figure had been scrubbed out. But Peter de Huyck also painted a nearly identical version of this, which has been held unaltered at the National Gallery of Art. Restorers use the soldier from that painting as a model to recreate this one.

• 37:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next, in 2018, somebody walked into a small art gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They took a Picasso print off the wall and they just walked out with it.

• 37:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  The print was of Picasso's 1949 Etching Torero, which is depicting a bullfighter. The gallery did not have any working security cameras at the time, and the missing artwork was not noticed for a few hours. The gallery owners reported the theft to the police once they realized it was gone. They raised money to offer a reward, and then when nothing came of any of that, they tried to spread the word about this theft on its anniversary every year.

• 37:55Holly Frey?

  In August, that painting was turned in to Milwaukee Police after a landlord found it hanging on a wall behind a door in a newly vacated apartment. It had a thick layer of dust on the frame, so it had seemingly hung there for quite a while. The statute of limitations on the original theft has expired, but news reports from August said this was still being investigated.

• 38:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  I find it kind of hilarious that, like, the landlord went to the newly empty apartment and went, what's this painting behind the door? Just to say. In our last bit of art news, a small marble statue, found in a salvage yard and purchased for 300 pounds, has turned out to be the work of 18th century Baroque sculptor Pietro Bracci. Bracci also carved the figure of Oceanus in Trevi Fountain in Rome. This statue was a maquette made for a bronze statue of Pope Clement XII, which was cast by Francesco Giordoni. The piece is the only known surviving maquette from the creation of the statue,

• 39:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  and then the statue itself no longer survives because it was melted down in the late 1790s.

• 39:09Holly Frey?

  Like so many of the things that we've talked about that were found in places like salvage yards or thrift shops, this one was headed for auction. That was scheduled for October 8th, which is after we're recording this, but before it will be published. It is estimated that this maquette could sell at auction for about 10,000 pounds.

• 39:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Since it is October, we will end this installment of Unearthed with a few things that could fit in with the Halloween theme as it's observed in the US. First, archaeologists have been studying a grave that was discovered in 2022. We actually talked about that discovery when it happened. The grave is in Poland, and it contained the remains of a young woman who lived about 400 years ago, who had been buried with an iron sickle over her neck and a padlock attached to the big toe of her left foot. Both of those things are known to have been used in anti-vampire or anti-demon rituals in the area around the time this person died. The cemetery was also near a crossroads, away from the nearest village,

• 40:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  suggesting that it was a place to bury people who were feared or who had been rejected by society. So this was very quickly dubbed a vampire burial.

• 40:22Holly Frey?

  In newly published work on this burial, archaeologists found tiny threads of silver and gilded wire near this person's skull, which are believed to have come from a silk cap, something that only a wealthy person was likely to have owned. The soil in the burial site was also disturbed in a way that suggested that someone had tried to dig up her body before it was fully decomposed, but long before the archaeological excavations that uncovered it. Based on the position of her limbs, this may have been done when the sickle was placed on the grave.

• 40:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  We now know a little bit more about this person than we did before. She was between 17 and 19 years old when she died, and that probably happened sometime between 1620 and 1674. Based on isotope and DNA analysis, she grew up in the area, but she also had Scandinavian ancestry. Even though the silk cap suggests that she came from a wealthy family, the carbon and nitrogen levels in her remains suggest that she went through periods of malnutrition. Researchers also found a green stain on her palate and neck bones, which could have come from a copper-containing object placed in her mouth after her death, although that is not clear.

• 41:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Her cause of death is still a mystery, as is what might have been going on in her community that led people to believe that they needed to keep precautions to keep her from rising from the dead.

• 41:52Holly Frey?

  Next, a paper authored by a team led by the University of Staffordshire has warned of health risks associated with international trafficking of mummified remains. Researchers analyzed 128 online posts and auction listings offering mummified remains for sale, most of them body parts, including heads. Mummified remains can include toxic compounds that were used in the mummification process, as well as bacteria and other contaminants from decomposition. The team found that the remains being advertised often showed signs of deterioration, but that sellers offered no safety guidance about how to handle them.

• 42:35Holly Frey?

  The listings also weren't compliant with regulations around the mail and shipping, meaning that postal workers and members of the public who happened to cross paths with these packages could be at risk. The paper notes that health risks from historical remains are not just a hypothetical, citing that 10 out of the 12 scientists who opened the tomb of King Casimir IV in 1973 in what is now Poland died, believed to be because they inhaled Aspergillus spores.

• 43:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  This research was published as an open access paper titled, "The Real Mummy's Curse: Health Risks Associated with the Sale and Trade of Mummified Remains." It was in the International Journal of Cultural Property. Do not buy or sell mummified remains through random online posts, or at all, really. We cannot stress this enough. Yeah, not for you not to do. Not okay for many reasons.

• 43:31Holly Frey?

  And lastly, two things that are real creepy if you are creeped out by teeth. Huzzah. The first was found in the Neolithic village of Jblonica, south of what is now Belgrade, Serbia, and was initially misidentified as a broken bead. It has now been identified as a human tooth that came from a middle-aged adult who lived more than 6,500 years ago. The root of the tooth is smooth and unbroken, suggesting that the person it belonged to had been dead for a long time when that tooth came out of the skull. It is not clear when or how that happened, but someone drilled a hole through the tooth, apparently to wear as a pendant, maybe to go visit the vampire person that was in

• 44:16Holly Frey?

  the earlier story.

• 44:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  The other of these finds was excavated from a Roman-era cemetery in Poland, and it is a 5,000-year-old necklace made of 42 teeth. These seem to be mostly the teeth of large mammals, like wolves, bear, and deer, but some of them may be human teeth. This necklace was excavated from a gravesite containing a man's remains, as well as two additional skulls, some amber beads, a flint knife, and a stone axe. Tooth jewelry for behind the scenes. Okay. Do you have spooky or unspooky listener mail? I have unspooky listener mail. It is from Caitlin. Caitlin sends us emails fairly often, and they are always so great.

• 45:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  And Caitlin sent us this in August. We are just now getting to it. Caitlin wrote, "Dear Tracy and Holly, about halfway through your recent episode on Mary Mallon and typhoid, I'd already made up my mind to write a note about the way individuals have or have not had their personal liberties set aside in the name of public health." Then you finished with a couple of sentences on exactly that, specifically naming the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. As a disability justice advocate and a historian, this intersection is always so interesting to me because, as a hypothetical, it seems obvious that a person should not be able to knowingly risk the health and safety of others.

• 45:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  The saying, "Your right to swing your fist stops at my nose," comes to mind, especially when looking at cases like Zook vs. King, which centered around whether San Antonio Independent School District could prohibit any child not vaccinated for smallpox from enrolling. The family in question, Zooks, argued that there was no ongoing public health emergency. So the choice of whether or not to vaccinate should be up to the individual. The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which unanimously determined that this was a justified use of police power to protect public health and safety. It's very easy to sit here 100 years later and say, "Of course, the court was right

• 46:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  in mandating vaccination in order to participate in public school helps prevent outbreaks of preventable disease." In fact, I say something similar to my students when we study this case. But there is always nuance, and I think Mary Mallon's story is an excellent example. Yes, she was wrong to return to cooking, knowing that she was a typhoid carrier, except there's not clarity on how well she understood that, and the scientific understanding of chronic typhoid was brand new. Except the same people who told her she couldn't cook didn't provide her a vocation that required an equivalent amount of physical labor for an equivalent wage. Except the remedy to her carrier status was not to incarcerate her indefinitely

• 47:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  with no due process or means of appeal. When there was a hantavirus outbreak earlier in 2026, I remember reading that some of the passengers who had been on the cruise ship that was determined to be the source were absolutely furious that they were being quarantined until the incubation period passed, because it was a violation of their rights in any way they felt fine. That attitude feels so selfish and individualistic to the point of callousness, and I can't help but look at the way American culture has largely dismissed the COVID pandemic as over and not that bad, and pushed for a return to normal as an influence. But now I find myself wondering if these passengers who were told to quarantine

• 47:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  were compensated for lost wages, if they had assistance caring for their families, pets, homes, and other responsibilities, and if they were offered hospitality and compassion in quarantine, or simply shut into a small room and told to wait for a few weeks. Thank you, as always, for a wonderful podcast. I look forward to new episodes every week and love familiar topics and unfamiliar topics equally. I've attached some recent pictures of my two creatures. Sharktopus is showing off her shapely figure. The shape is a potato. And Dimitri is impersonating an orange best Caitlin. I love emails from Caitlin. They are so good. We have an orange kitty.

• 48:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  And we also have a torty kind of kitty with a little white on the belly. Potato is a great shape. Potato is a very great shape. We love it. Thank you so much, Caitlin. Again, Caitlin sends great emails. I would read all of them, but can't necessarily read all of them. So, thank you again, Caitlin. If you would like to send us a note, we're at [email protected]. If you would like to read the incredibly long show notes to this episode, including links to all of the articles that we have talked about over these last two episodes, that's at missedinhistory.com. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.

• 49:23Tracy 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.

• 49:37Holly 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 50:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

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• 51:28Speaker 11

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• 51:51Speaker 00

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