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Prince of Whales · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The humble farmer the
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  Speaker 1: backbone of the American way of life. They grow and
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  Speaker 1: harvest to provide not only for their own families, but
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  Speaker 1: ours as well. Everything from corn to potatoes to squash
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  Speaker 1: is cultivated across world farmland from coast to coast. However,
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  Speaker 1: in eighty nine, something else was unearthed in a farmer's field,
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  Speaker 1: something that didn't make sense, something that didn't belong there.
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  Speaker 1: Workers in Vermont were digging up land to build the
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  Speaker 1: first railroad between Burlington and Rutland. During the dig, one
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  Speaker 1: of the workers noticed something sticking up in the dirt, bones,
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  Speaker 1: quite a few of them. In fact, he didn't think
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  Speaker 1: much of them at the time, seeing as how horse
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  Speaker 1: skeletons had been spotted from time to time as they
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  Speaker 1: were pulling up the land. So they kept working, not
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  Speaker 1: caring too much about what happened to the former horse.
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  Speaker 1: They just unearthed. A local residents, Mr John G. Thorpe,
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  Speaker 1: had been passing by when he too saw the bones
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  Speaker 1: poking out from the dig site. There was something about
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  Speaker 1: them that struck him as odd, though he certainly didn't
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  Speaker 1: think they were horse bones, so he convinced the man
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  Speaker 1: in charge of the railroad project to move his workers
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  Speaker 1: to another plot of land so he could collect and
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  Speaker 1: analyze the bones. Naturalist ZADEK. Thompson was brought in for
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  Speaker 1: his expertise in identifying what kind of animal the bones
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  Speaker 1: had once belonged to. Thompson was a prolific author of
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  Speaker 1: many animal and nature guides. Despite serious limitations to his situation.
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  Speaker 1: No one else was working in his field, and he
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  Speaker 1: had no access to specimens or books to further his studies.
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  Speaker 1: He was charting new territory for the scientific community, but
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  Speaker 1: that didn't stop him from studying the various flora and
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  Speaker 1: fauna in his native Vermont, including the skeleton Mr. Thorpe
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  Speaker 1: had rescued from the railroad workers. After some consideration and examination,
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  Speaker 1: Mr Thompson identified it as having belonged to the ancient
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  Speaker 1: ancestor of the Beluga whale. While there was no way
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  Speaker 1: to determine its sex, its skull and teeth indicated the
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  Speaker 1: twelve foot long specimen had been a full grown adult
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  Speaker 1: before its death. It was a fascinating discovery, but there
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  Speaker 1: were two questions the men shared, as did everyone else
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  Speaker 1: who came across the specimen. First, how did a beluga
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  Speaker 1: whale wind up in the middle of a farmer's field
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  Speaker 1: in Vermont, one fifty miles from the closest shore. And second,
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  Speaker 1: how had it made its way so far down from
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  Speaker 1: the native Arctic waters of the North. Such a creature
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  Speaker 1: had no business being so far from its home. Well,
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  Speaker 1: it took a while for technology and environmental studies to
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  Speaker 1: catch up. The scientists eventually learned that the Charlotte whale,
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  Speaker 1: named for the town where it was discovered, had been
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  Speaker 1: stuck in Vermont for a very long time. The bones
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  Speaker 1: had been preserved under ten feet of blue clay sediments
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  Speaker 1: left over from the Champlain Sea, a temporary inlet that
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  Speaker 1: had formed when glaciers retreated at the end of the
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  Speaker 1: last glacial period. The sea had dried up thousands of
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  Speaker 1: years ago, leaving the whale and presumably other creatures in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of Vermont with no way out. Today, the
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  Speaker 1: Charlotte whale is the official state marine fossil of Vermont,
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  Speaker 1: and while it's certainly strange to find something as large
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  Speaker 1: as a dead whale so far from the ocean. It
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  Speaker 1: happens more than we realize. Discoveries like this teach us
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  Speaker 1: about how the Earth changes, how oceans shift over time,
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  Speaker 1: and even how those changes affect the migration of wildlife
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  Speaker 1: around the globe. The world around us is never constant.
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  Speaker 1: We may think we're fine, but if we sit still
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  Speaker 1: long enough, we might discover we've missed our window to
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  Speaker 1: get out, just like the Charlotte whale. While America is
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  Speaker 1: a relatively young country, the history of the land upon
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  Speaker 1: which it sits extends as far back as the beginning
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  Speaker 1: of time itself. Culture has lived and died for thousands
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  Speaker 1: of years before we got here, and we can still
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  Speaker 1: see remnants of their existence if we look hard enough.
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  Speaker 1: Drawings on cave walls and artifacts left behind offer insight
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  Speaker 1: into how they lived and what they cared about. Shards
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  Speaker 1: of ornate pottery can tell us how a culture might
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  Speaker 1: have valued craftsmanship as much as they valued practicality. But
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  Speaker 1: what about the artifacts that defy explanation, the ones that
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  Speaker 1: cannot be explained and in one case, shouldn't exist at all.
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  Speaker 1: Near a small town in Minnesota, in a Swedish resident
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  Speaker 1: named Olaf Omen had recently purchased a plot of land
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  Speaker 1: needing some clean up. The trees and old stumps had
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  Speaker 1: to be pulled out so he could start plowing. As
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  Speaker 1: he was working with his ten year old son Edward
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  Speaker 1: at his side, it came across a poplar tree with
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  Speaker 1: something tangled in its roots. It was large and gray
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  Speaker 1: and heavy, a slab of rock weighing over two hundred pounds.
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  Speaker 1: While unusual for something so large to be found at
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  Speaker 1: the base of a tree, Olaf didn't think much of
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  Speaker 1: it until his son mentioned the strange markings all over
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  Speaker 1: its sides and face. He had assumed they'd found an
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  Speaker 1: old Native American almanac, a record of past and future
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  Speaker 1: events as predicted by the local native population from hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of years ago. Olaf had a copy of the inscriptions
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  Speaker 1: sent to several universities for analysis, and the results weren't
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  Speaker 1: what he'd expected. It spoke of a mixed group of
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  Speaker 1: Norwegians and Germans setting out on a journey from Vinland
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  Speaker 1: to America in thirteen sixty two, on thirty years before
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  Speaker 1: Columbus would set foot in the New World. According to
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  Speaker 1: the historians and linguistic experts at the time the stone
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  Speaker 1: was a forgery, a fake. The symbols weren't Native American
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  Speaker 1: but modern Scandinavian in origin, and while the stone itself
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  Speaker 1: was many centuries old, the tree that it had supposedly
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  Speaker 1: been buried beneath was only about thirty years old. Olaff
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  Speaker 1: later sold the stone to historian Yalmar Holland for ten
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  Speaker 1: dollars and walked away from his discovery. Holland, however, wanted
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  Speaker 1: the world to know about it. He believed in its
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  Speaker 1: authenticity and wrote an article that went about as viral
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  Speaker 1: as an article could get. Back in the nineteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: he took the Kensington Ruined Stone, named for the town
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  Speaker 1: it was found in, on a tour across Europe, struggling
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  Speaker 1: for forty years to convince the smartest people in the
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  Speaker 1: world that what he possessed was a truly unique historical artifact. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: historians and x where It's concurred that despite the stone
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  Speaker 1: itself being quiet ancient, the language and the carvings found
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  Speaker 1: on it were no more than a hundred years old.
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  Speaker 1: It didn't help that in nineteen seventy six, an interview
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  Speaker 1: with the son of a man who had known olaf
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  Speaker 1: Omen came to light, wherein he confessed that Omen himself
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  Speaker 1: had carved the inscriptions, and that seemed to be the
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  Speaker 1: end of the story. The Ruined Stone had been nothing
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  Speaker 1: more than an elaborate hoax, to what end no one knows.
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  Speaker 1: But in night two a professor at Cornell University named
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  Speaker 1: Robert Hall decided to take another crack at it. He
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  Speaker 1: re examined the ruins, eventually publishing a book on his findings.
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  Speaker 1: He took issue with how the stones critics had conducted
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  Speaker 1: their research and claimed that the bizarre mix of ancient
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  Speaker 1: and modern Scandinavian could have been due to the Swedish
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  Speaker 1: language starting to change at the time. Two distinct groups
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  Speaker 1: from different regions in the world traveling together for so
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  Speaker 1: long might have resulted in the linguistic equivalent of cross pollination.
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  Speaker 1: In addition, a letter written by Dutch cartog or for
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  Speaker 1: gerardis Mercator to the mathematician John d referred to a
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  Speaker 1: man who had received word of eight men traveling to
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  Speaker 1: the Arctic Islands from Norway in the mid thirt hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: Journeys from Scandinavia to North America at the time, we're
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  Speaker 1: apparently not unheard of today. The Kensington Ruined Stone is
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  Speaker 1: the centerpiece of the aptly named Ruinstone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota,
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  Speaker 1: and its influence extends far beyond its questionable origin story.
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  Speaker 1: The stone and its alleged Viking heritage have inspired the
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  Speaker 1: state's official football team, the Minnesota Vikings, as well as
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  Speaker 1: countless other buildings and businesses with similarly themed names. What
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  Speaker 1: began as a curious discovery in an empty field transformed
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  Speaker 1: an entire state's identity. The debate over the Kensington Runestone
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  Speaker 1: continues to this day, but it's authenticity might not even
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  Speaker 1: matter anymore. It's not the reality that people have lashed onto,
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  Speaker 1: but the belief in what it could be, who we are,
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  Speaker 1: It's names is never set in stone. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com, and until next time, stay curious.