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Archaeology in a Nutshell · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Don't
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Bryant Old's with us again.
0:16
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, it's Morning Edition How Stuff Work. It's right.
0:21
Speaker 1: Are the Indiana Jones chronicles he's in this article. Man,
0:25
Speaker 1: you can't do archaeology without talking about Indiana Jones because
0:29
Speaker 1: you can't spell it without Indiana Jones. Uh. And do
0:33
Speaker 1: you know why? Because, as his article points out, archaeologists
0:38
Speaker 1: are one part explorer, one part scholar, one part P. T. Barnum,
0:42
Speaker 1: one part ps, one part scientist, and one part historian,
0:46
Speaker 1: which is true, and that is exactly who Indiana Jones was.
0:49
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Plus he knew his way around a whipping
0:52
Speaker 1: and gun. Well, you know, if you're gonna get the
0:55
Speaker 1: ark of the Covenant, you're gonna have to whip a
0:56
Speaker 1: couple of dudes. That's what Steven Spielberg says. At least
1:01
Speaker 1: I know he got that across quite plainly. Yeah, the
1:04
Speaker 1: whipp thing was a good idea. That was neat throwback,
1:08
Speaker 1: although he never whipped a cigarette out of somebody's mouth,
1:11
Speaker 1: which I was waiting for. Like the whole movie. Oh
1:13
Speaker 1: that's a parlor trick. Yeah, well it's pretty cool. That's
1:16
Speaker 1: very cool. Uh did you have an intro? Did I
1:19
Speaker 1: spoil it? No? It was as good an intro as
1:22
Speaker 1: any you know me in archaeology. That was the first
1:25
Speaker 1: word I could spell. Um, was it? Really? Let me
1:29
Speaker 1: take that back. That was the first big word I
1:30
Speaker 1: could spell. I'm sure I had like dog and cat
1:33
Speaker 1: and all that down first, but I remember being in
1:36
Speaker 1: second or third grade and spelling it and the teacher
1:38
Speaker 1: being like wow, And I was like, yeah, I'll bet
1:41
Speaker 1: you're impressed because I'm young and I can spell archaeology correctly,
1:45
Speaker 1: and she said, guess it in the corner. The reason
1:47
Speaker 1: why I could spell it is because I had already
1:49
Speaker 1: been studying it for years. I've always been fascinated by archaeology. Yeah.
1:54
Speaker 1: I could have seen you doing this for a living.
1:57
Speaker 1: My buddy Jerry Um out in Portland's Jerry's both of
2:00
Speaker 1: our buddy different Um Jerry in Portland mail Jerry is Uh,
2:07
Speaker 1: Jerry purpose is a here you go. That's why we
2:10
Speaker 1: had last night. He was a history and I think
2:12
Speaker 1: anthropology major two and wanted to get into archaeology. So
2:14
Speaker 1: all those disciplines. Like it's a science that is heavily
2:19
Speaker 1: uh butted up against the humanities. It's pretty neat well,
2:22
Speaker 1: it's kind of absorbed them, kind of like some early
2:26
Speaker 1: bacteria absorbed um mitochondria, you know, and used it for
2:32
Speaker 1: itself the power. Yeah, but it's it's very much in
2:35
Speaker 1: that vein. Like archaeology started out as a very straightforward,
2:40
Speaker 1: simplistic discipline and at one point finally the archaeologists got
2:46
Speaker 1: bored and they said this, this could be so much
2:49
Speaker 1: more and they expanded, which we'll talk about when we
2:51
Speaker 1: get into the history of archaeology, but just the word itself,
2:55
Speaker 1: it does definitely conjure Indiana Jones um and he was
3:00
Speaker 1: one part this, one part that, And yes, archaeologists are that.
3:03
Speaker 1: But the entire pursuit of archaeology is so unwieldy. There's
3:07
Speaker 1: so much to it, documenting all human industry from the
3:11
Speaker 1: very recent past to the furthest reaches into human history
3:16
Speaker 1: that the the field is broken into a lot of
3:18
Speaker 1: different disciplines, and even those are broken further into subdisciplines,
3:22
Speaker 1: so much so that like if you take a forensic
3:25
Speaker 1: archaeologist and put it up against a glacial archaeologists. It'll
3:29
Speaker 1: be like, are these two really the same in the
3:31
Speaker 1: same field? Are they? They are? But they definitely you
3:36
Speaker 1: might not have a lot to talk about, you know,
3:38
Speaker 1: like how about that ice for success is going to
3:41
Speaker 1: how about that grave site? Like I have no idea
3:43
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. They're also broken into geographical areas
3:47
Speaker 1: sometimes or uh like time periods. Yeah, like you are
3:52
Speaker 1: a Mesopotamian archaeologists, like that's your specialty, and that makes sense.
3:57
Speaker 1: There's underwater archaeologists, which I think I I wrote a
4:00
Speaker 1: few of these articles back then. I think I did
4:02
Speaker 1: want to underwater archaeology too. It's so interesting that we
4:05
Speaker 1: didn't touch on. But that's super interesting because the trick
4:08
Speaker 1: with all archaeology is preservation. You don't just dig in
4:11
Speaker 1: there with a shovel and like pick up the vase
4:14
Speaker 1: like in the movie and shake it see what's inside.
4:17
Speaker 1: It's a lot more technical than that. And with underwater archaeology,
4:20
Speaker 1: you know that stuff is so fragile. You have to
4:22
Speaker 1: transport it in the exact state that it was in.
4:25
Speaker 1: So like if you find a book down there, you
4:27
Speaker 1: have to put that book in a tank of salt
4:30
Speaker 1: water at the right temperature a book. Well yeah, sure, okay,
4:35
Speaker 1: Well you know I'm not saying it's been down there
4:37
Speaker 1: a thousands years. I have this a stopwatch from the
4:41
Speaker 1: Titanic pocket watch. You have to transport it in a
4:46
Speaker 1: tank of saltwater at that temperature with the right amount
4:48
Speaker 1: of sand to wherever you're going to take it to
4:51
Speaker 1: your laboratory essentially, and then put on an expensive exhibit. Yes, exactly. Um.
4:56
Speaker 1: And underwater archaeology isn't necessarily just stuff that that sunk,
5:01
Speaker 1: although that part is so fascinating, Like things that are
5:04
Speaker 1: supposed to be above water that are now submerged just
5:08
Speaker 1: take on a whole different attitude to me. Yeah yeah, um.
5:14
Speaker 1: But there's other other underwater archaeology too that that goes
5:17
Speaker 1: beyond shipwrecks, Like they recently found a nine thousand year
5:20
Speaker 1: old um hunting blind in lake here on what Yeah,
5:25
Speaker 1: it used to be above water, and then after the
5:28
Speaker 1: ice Age, the water levels rose and covered it up,
5:30
Speaker 1: and they recently discovered it under a hundred ft of water.
5:34
Speaker 1: And it basically consists of some lanes of stone with
5:39
Speaker 1: a cul de sac yeah um, that they would kind
5:42
Speaker 1: of use to shoot caribou through, and then at the
5:47
Speaker 1: end they're like the Cariboers like cul de Sac and
5:49
Speaker 1: then death. Yeah, but they recognized this and then documented
5:55
Speaker 1: it under a hundred and twenty ft of water and
5:57
Speaker 1: Lake Huron. That sounds like it perhaps could have been
6:00
Speaker 1: an accidental find. Do you know. I don't know how
6:04
Speaker 1: they're looking for that. I don't I don't know. But
6:07
Speaker 1: the idea that you could look at some rocks and
6:10
Speaker 1: be like, oh, well, this is a hunting blind from
6:12
Speaker 1: nine thousand years ago used to hunt caribou underwater. That
6:18
Speaker 1: just seems really special to me. That is very cool.
6:22
Speaker 1: But I mentioned accidental finds because that's one of the
6:24
Speaker 1: neat things about archaeology. Um. If you're an archaeologist, clearly
6:28
Speaker 1: you are going to be have be in your bonnet
6:31
Speaker 1: to go find whatever it is ark of the Covenant.
6:33
Speaker 1: But there's things found all the time just by people
6:36
Speaker 1: who stumble upon them, accidental finds. Um. Because there's there's
6:41
Speaker 1: junk everywhere, like the cave paintings at lasco. Yeah. I
6:46
Speaker 1: want to say junk. I mean that in the like
6:48
Speaker 1: stuff way, in the academic sense, not worthless. It's all
6:52
Speaker 1: great stuff. But the less Go Cave in France was
6:56
Speaker 1: discovered accidentally by some local teens. Apparently there was a
7:00
Speaker 1: storm and a tree fell over and it exposed this
7:02
Speaker 1: cave entrance that had been covered for thousands and thousands
7:05
Speaker 1: of years at the Dead Sea scrolls. That was an accident.
7:09
Speaker 1: A nineteen seven a Bedouin shepherd found them and said, hey,
7:13
Speaker 1: these these are comportant. Yeah, what else for a little
7:19
Speaker 1: French schoolboys? Let's go? Oh is that? Let's go? Yeah? Okay,
7:23
Speaker 1: I don't know why she didn't put it in the article. Yeah,
7:28
Speaker 1: that is weird. She left out that one word. Um.
7:32
Speaker 1: All right, so let's go back a little bit and
7:34
Speaker 1: talk about how the stuff all started because in the
7:37
Speaker 1: you know, fourteen centuries, people really weren't too concerned about
7:41
Speaker 1: the past. Well that's not true. They weren't looking for
7:43
Speaker 1: artifacts the necessarily, or if they were looking for artifacts,
7:46
Speaker 1: they were just looting it and selling it and maybe
7:48
Speaker 1: melting it down for its gold. Like the the artifact
7:52
Speaker 1: that self didn't necessarily have any value simply because it
7:56
Speaker 1: was old. Yeah, that's a good way to say. That
7:58
Speaker 1: came about as a result of, um, the rise of humanism,
8:03
Speaker 1: which gave rise to the humanities, which basically prized art
8:05
Speaker 1: for art's sake, and um gave birth to the concept
8:09
Speaker 1: that antiquities have value because of their age. Uh. And
8:13
Speaker 1: then the the Renaissance. Basically it was birth from the Renaissance.
8:19
Speaker 1: There's a dude named Flavio beyond though that was my
8:22
Speaker 1: clumsy at times. You want to speak, say it again,
8:26
Speaker 1: Flavio energy into it and then your Italian. Yeah, I
8:33
Speaker 1: think that's my problem because I'm fairly low key, you know. Anyway,
8:37
Speaker 1: Flavio Beyondo was the first person to create a guide
8:40
Speaker 1: to the ruins of ancient Rome in the early fifteenth century,
8:44
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say that is the first
8:47
Speaker 1: person you can point to who gave rise to archaeology
8:52
Speaker 1: potentially and said basically, these things that we find, uh,
8:57
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't just melt down, maybe we should preserve them.
9:00
Speaker 1: This is sort of an important thing for the future,
9:02
Speaker 1: exactly right. Um, So he was one of the first
9:06
Speaker 1: and then from that point on the idea of um
9:10
Speaker 1: collecting things kind of took hold and it was a
9:15
Speaker 1: little nuts so for a while, like people would just
9:17
Speaker 1: go into it. There was no there was no aim
9:19
Speaker 1: to preserve the site itself. You just wanted all the
9:22
Speaker 1: artifacts from the site, so you could fill your palace
9:25
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, and I get the sense that there
9:27
Speaker 1: was definitely a boom in the Renaissance and among royalty
9:30
Speaker 1: of wanting things from ancient Greece and Rome, and I
9:33
Speaker 1: know the Queen of Naples wanted, you know, ancient statues
9:37
Speaker 1: and things to fill her palace and uh, you know,
9:41
Speaker 1: trying to find out what happened with Pompeii and Herculaneum. Yeah,
9:46
Speaker 1: that's that's why they were excavated. In was after their stuff.
9:51
Speaker 1: And Pompeii is really neat, by the way, but all
9:54
Speaker 1: of the artifacts, it's totally deserted. Everything that's there is
9:58
Speaker 1: a permanent structure. All the artifacts have been removed and
10:02
Speaker 1: they're still in Naples where they were taken in seventy. Yeah,
10:07
Speaker 1: and we'll get a little bit later on into like
10:08
Speaker 1: who owns this stuff. That's pretty interesting. But Napoleon was
10:12
Speaker 1: a big proponent of archaeology. And I know we talked
10:15
Speaker 1: during the King Tut's Tomb episode about Egyptology, and he
10:20
Speaker 1: formed the Institute of Egypt basically a think tank in
10:25
Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundreds of a hundred and seventy five scholars,
10:29
Speaker 1: and it was just that fascination with Egypt and Napoleon
10:33
Speaker 1: was all over. It formed this think tank and said
10:35
Speaker 1: go find stuff right and like collected for me. And
10:39
Speaker 1: they published a book too that really kind of loosed
10:42
Speaker 1: archaeology and the idea of archaeology um on the world
10:46
Speaker 1: is called Description of Egypt that they published in eighteen
10:49
Speaker 1: o nine. Such a bland title it was, but it
10:52
Speaker 1: like created Egypt fever um and so that came out
10:56
Speaker 1: in eighteen o nine. In eighteen twelve, a British guy
11:00
Speaker 1: named Richard Colt or h. O. A. R. E. He
11:03
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Ancient History of Wiltshire in eighteen
11:09
Speaker 1: twelve and basically he described methods for excavating methodically. He
11:14
Speaker 1: also um was the first to identify what are called tells,
11:18
Speaker 1: which are mounds, ancient mounds of basically a city being
11:21
Speaker 1: built on a city on the city in the city,
11:23
Speaker 1: in the city that they've been continuously occupied for thousands
11:27
Speaker 1: and thousands of years. And then you know who else
11:29
Speaker 1: was a early archaeologist Harrison Ford earlier than him, uh,
11:36
Speaker 1: I don't know. Thomas Jefferson in the eighteenth century, late
11:41
Speaker 1: eighteenth early nineteenth century. He was methodically excavating burial mounds
11:47
Speaker 1: UM on Monticello, on his land at Monticello, in between
11:51
Speaker 1: rewriting the Bible. Yeah, he did a lot of stuff, um,
11:55
Speaker 1: but yeah, he was one of the early ones to
11:57
Speaker 1: methodically do it. So there's like all of this enthusiasm
12:00
Speaker 1: as in for antiquities and basically what amounts to looting
12:03
Speaker 1: and grave robbing. But simultaneously there's these independent gentleman scholars
12:08
Speaker 1: who are amateurs because there is no academic field yet, um,
12:12
Speaker 1: who are creating the UM basically the body of experimental archaeology.
12:20
Speaker 1: How to do it, the methodology, the best practices. Yeah.
12:23
Speaker 1: In the nineteenth century, a guy named Charles Lyell basically
12:27
Speaker 1: started um. They called it, you know, uniformitarian stratigraphy, and
12:33
Speaker 1: which is actually a pretty big hornets test, is it? Well,
12:36
Speaker 1: I looked in into the uniformitarianism period and the whole
12:40
Speaker 1: thing is but what does that have to do with dating?
12:42
Speaker 1: It was a dating system, Yeah, it basically Before then
12:44
Speaker 1: there is this thing called catastrophism where basically it was
12:48
Speaker 1: like the Earth is static and it changes only in
12:51
Speaker 1: the face of major catastrophes like a comet strike or something.
12:55
Speaker 1: He's the only thing that changes the Earth itself. Uniformitarian
12:59
Speaker 1: stread geography basically says, no, that's not the case, and
13:03
Speaker 1: it gave us what we now understand as geological processes
13:07
Speaker 1: geological time scales. It basically said, the Earth changes constantly,
13:11
Speaker 1: but our lifespan is so short we can't possibly witness it.
13:15
Speaker 1: But if you look at this, the processes that take
13:18
Speaker 1: place now are the processes that the Earth has always
13:22
Speaker 1: been subjected to. So one of those processes is sediment,
13:27
Speaker 1: sediment deposits, and you can date things thanks to sediment
13:31
Speaker 1: deposits because they're actually a predictable thing. So when you're
13:34
Speaker 1: digging in to sediment, you're digging into the past and
13:37
Speaker 1: you can date something you find in that sediment. That's
13:40
Speaker 1: basically what it gave our geology, digging into history. Yeah,
13:43
Speaker 1: that sounds like the idea that you can date from
13:45
Speaker 1: layers of ground. Yeah it sounds easy now or not easy,
13:49
Speaker 1: but it makes sense now, but back then it was
13:50
Speaker 1: pretty ravel. That's our world view now. But this is
13:54
Speaker 1: one of the guys who introduced it, Charles Lyle. Yeah,
13:57
Speaker 1: our hats are all to you, sir, And he didn't
14:00
Speaker 1: come up with it, but he was a huge proponent
14:02
Speaker 1: of it who gained a lot of traction with it. Uh,
14:05
Speaker 1: you're talking about methods in um Flinder Flinders Petrie Boy,
14:11
Speaker 1: what a great name. In nineto four wrote a book
14:14
Speaker 1: called Methods and Aims in Archaeology, and that was one
14:16
Speaker 1: of the first ones to sort of break down how
14:18
Speaker 1: it responsibly excavate the site yeah um, and not just
14:22
Speaker 1: to go in there and loot it um. And that
14:24
Speaker 1: was a big turning point that the twentieth century, the
14:27
Speaker 1: turn of the century. The find I think it's what
14:31
Speaker 1: it's called, yeah um. That was a huge turning point
14:34
Speaker 1: in archaeology. It really represented the when methodology took hold.
14:40
Speaker 1: Like there was a guy named Heinrich Schliemann who discovered
14:44
Speaker 1: Troy basically um and he uh just basically went in
14:50
Speaker 1: and started tearing through the sediment and he identified a
14:53
Speaker 1: bunch of different layers of occupation, but he didn't really
14:58
Speaker 1: document him like he should four definitely he had an
15:01
Speaker 1: assistant named Wilhelm Dorpe felt yeah, and he kind of
15:06
Speaker 1: took a different approach to it, a much more methodical approach.
15:10
Speaker 1: And all of this took place at around the same time.
15:12
Speaker 1: So like even on the site of troy Um. This
15:15
Speaker 1: change from pillaging to methodology took place. Yeah, they probably
15:21
Speaker 1: got tired of hearing their uh workers say broke, right,
15:26
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, they're like, all right, well maybe we
15:27
Speaker 1: should slow down and uh it broke be a little
15:30
Speaker 1: more judicious with the shovel. Uh. Dating Um, old things
15:37
Speaker 1: is a big part of archaeology. It's no good just
15:39
Speaker 1: to find something. You want to know exactly where it
15:42
Speaker 1: came from because well, one reason, because it has more
15:46
Speaker 1: value if it's older. That was probably what led the
15:48
Speaker 1: dating charge. But um, there's a bunch of different ways
15:51
Speaker 1: they can date, and they have dated over the years. Uh.
15:54
Speaker 1: Something can be self dated. If you find treasurer that's
15:58
Speaker 1: stamped with a date, then it's done the work for you.
16:02
Speaker 1: Relative dating. If you find something that's with a bunch
16:04
Speaker 1: of other stuff that you can date, then you can
16:06
Speaker 1: probably say, you know, this stuff from King Tut's tomb
16:09
Speaker 1: is probably all around the same time period. Clay barbs counting,
16:15
Speaker 1: and that is counting varves, which are little laminated sediments
16:18
Speaker 1: that accumulate, and that can help you out for about
16:22
Speaker 1: five thousand years back. No, it can go even further
16:24
Speaker 1: than really, yeah, how far I mean as far as
16:27
Speaker 1: you want to go in the sediment. That's part of
16:29
Speaker 1: the uniformitarian stratiography. Oh, I was misreading and I'm sorry.
16:33
Speaker 1: Our written chronology only goes back five thousands, right, so
16:36
Speaker 1: you can yeah. Yeah. And then the idea we didn't
16:40
Speaker 1: give we didn't pay proper homage to um Darwin because
16:44
Speaker 1: his we did a whole show on him, right, But
16:46
Speaker 1: in this one um on the Origin of species um,
16:51
Speaker 1: the that presented the idea that mankind had a history,
16:55
Speaker 1: you that went back way further than a few thousand years,
16:59
Speaker 1: and that kind of inspired archaeology to look around for
17:03
Speaker 1: it more, you know. Uh. And then some of the
17:06
Speaker 1: more recent ones, which we could probably do shows on
17:09
Speaker 1: a couple of these, carbon dating radioactive carbon dating, potassium
17:14
Speaker 1: argon dating, and thermo luminescence UM that measures light energy
17:19
Speaker 1: and the intensity of light energy. Amazing, you can calculate
17:22
Speaker 1: the last time an object was exposed to sunlight through
17:25
Speaker 1: through thermo luminescence dating, and with potassium argon dating you
17:28
Speaker 1: can date things back two million years if you believe
17:32
Speaker 1: the Earth's been around the long so um. But just
17:37
Speaker 1: a little more about the history of archaeology, if you'll
17:40
Speaker 1: indulge me please. So methodology took place in the early
17:44
Speaker 1: twentieth century. It became about that time in academic discipline.
17:48
Speaker 1: Funny enough, they didn't start applying the scientific method to
17:52
Speaker 1: archaeology necessarily until like the fifties or sixties. But yeah, um,
17:56
Speaker 1: but it had its own method, and the method it
18:00
Speaker 1: among archaeologists was you find an artifact, you date it,
18:04
Speaker 1: and you catalog it. The archaeologist job was to date
18:08
Speaker 1: and catalog and ultimately contribute to this growing body of
18:12
Speaker 1: knowledge that was the timeline of human history and preserve obviously,
18:19
Speaker 1: but it was like, these tools are older than this tool,
18:23
Speaker 1: which means that the people who made these tools where
18:26
Speaker 1: the predecessors of the people who made these tools. That
18:29
Speaker 1: was it. Archaeologists got bored in the fifties, and they said,
18:33
Speaker 1: we're explaining how these um these tools have progressed, or
18:39
Speaker 1: human industry has progressed, but not why. Right when they
18:43
Speaker 1: decided to start answering why, archaeology became a far more
18:47
Speaker 1: interesting field. It became a multidisciplinary field, and all of
18:51
Speaker 1: a sudden, they're bringing in experts in ceramics, experts in metallurgy,
18:56
Speaker 1: and and grabbing all these people from different fields and
18:59
Speaker 1: saying how can we answer why this changed? What led
19:02
Speaker 1: to what change? And archaeology at that point in about
19:06
Speaker 1: the fifties or sixties became the very far flong, widespread,
19:11
Speaker 1: all encompassing, uh discipline that it is today. That's awesome. Yeah,
19:16
Speaker 1: so with help, Yeah, with a little help from their friends,
19:19
Speaker 1: from their expert friends. All Right, I guess we can
19:21
Speaker 1: talk right after this message, break a little bit about um,
19:25
Speaker 1: how things start off. If you want to go to
19:27
Speaker 1: gick something up. Okay, buddy, we're back. Uh. Field Work
19:35
Speaker 1: is a word that you're going to hear an archaeology
19:37
Speaker 1: a lot, and depending on who you talked to, it
19:39
Speaker 1: might entail the whole process or just out in the field,
19:43
Speaker 1: like at the actual excavation. But I think most folks
19:47
Speaker 1: nowadays consider field work the excavation and all the pre work. Uh.
19:54
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of research that goes into
19:55
Speaker 1: it beforehand, in offices and school rooms and libraries and
20:00
Speaker 1: what have you. And I think it's either all it's
20:03
Speaker 1: everything including excavation, or it's all the stuff that leads
20:05
Speaker 1: up to excavation is considered field work, right, I would
20:08
Speaker 1: call it predig activity. That's what I would go with
20:12
Speaker 1: that's where you go with. So excavation and field work
20:15
Speaker 1: are two different things for you. Sure, Okay, if I
20:19
Speaker 1: was opening up my own archaeological firm, that would be
20:22
Speaker 1: my model. Yeah, it seems to be really there's not
20:25
Speaker 1: a big problem with it either way. UM. So when
20:29
Speaker 1: you when you do find something, like you said, um,
20:32
Speaker 1: there's a couple of different ways things can be found.
20:35
Speaker 1: They can be determinedly, doggedly solid after which can be
20:39
Speaker 1: part of the field work, going through the stacks in
20:41
Speaker 1: the library, looking for references in ancient literature, UM, and
20:46
Speaker 1: just kind of trying to figure out where something might be.
20:50
Speaker 1: That's what Schlieman did with Troy. UM. He read the
20:54
Speaker 1: Iliad I Believe, which um describes the Trojan War UM
20:59
Speaker 1: and said look for clues. Yes, yeah, and and that's
21:04
Speaker 1: when he was like, I'm pretty sure this is where
21:05
Speaker 1: Troy is. Yeah, you're like a sort of a history
21:08
Speaker 1: detective at that point exactly which is Indiana Jones. After that,
21:12
Speaker 1: you may you have to go get some permits, vocal permits. Uh.
21:17
Speaker 1: And you're also gonna want to go get a grant
21:19
Speaker 1: because you're probably not going to fund this out of
21:21
Speaker 1: your own pocket unless you're somebody like James Cameron or whatever,
21:25
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. No, but grants can come
21:27
Speaker 1: from rich people who may want some of the stuff.
21:30
Speaker 1: Or maybe a museum wants to pony up some money
21:33
Speaker 1: if they really want a certain exhibit in their museum, right,
21:37
Speaker 1: or your university that you work for, UM should underwrite
21:42
Speaker 1: some of it. Yeah, but you get your you get
21:44
Speaker 1: your funding, you've got your grad student assistants. Maybe if
21:47
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a really big dig you UM put
21:50
Speaker 1: a flyer up at the local senior center. See if
21:54
Speaker 1: anybody wants to come help during the days because of
21:56
Speaker 1: the elderly would be good diggers, No, they would be
22:00
Speaker 1: awesome diggers. And here's why it takes a lot of
22:04
Speaker 1: patients to excavate a site. When you excavate a site,
22:09
Speaker 1: you're basically coordining it off. UM. And by the way,
22:13
Speaker 1: we've left at a really important point here. There's something
22:16
Speaker 1: called geophysical prospecting, which basically uses uh, some pretty incredible
22:22
Speaker 1: devices that measure differences in electromagnetism or electric connectivity in
22:28
Speaker 1: the ground and then basically gives you a pretty picture
22:31
Speaker 1: back saying here's something that's not rock. It's like an
22:34
Speaker 1: advanced super advanced metal detector basically UM, but it can
22:38
Speaker 1: also detect other really nuanced stuff like paint. It's in
22:41
Speaker 1: everything detected. Yeah, it's just good stuff. So you you're
22:44
Speaker 1: not just you may have read a book that says
22:47
Speaker 1: I think that this ancient site is here, but then
22:51
Speaker 1: you don't just start cordining off and digging. You do
22:53
Speaker 1: a survey of the site to look for stuff and
22:56
Speaker 1: see if it's likely that it might still be right. Yeah,
22:58
Speaker 1: that's a huge step that, if you may see, youre
23:00
Speaker 1: a terrible archaeologist. So I'm sorry we left that part out.
23:03
Speaker 1: Now that you've got a basically a subterranean map of
23:07
Speaker 1: the site, UM, you coordinate off and you start digging,
23:11
Speaker 1: usually by meter, and when you're digging by meter, you
23:15
Speaker 1: literally remove just one thin layer of that square meter
23:22
Speaker 1: at a time. Yeah, because we we've said earlier preservation
23:25
Speaker 1: is key and they were breaking things early on, and uh,
23:29
Speaker 1: one way to not break things is to go super
23:31
Speaker 1: super slow, super slow, just a little bit at a time.
23:35
Speaker 1: And I know everyone has seen the footage of archaeologists
23:39
Speaker 1: on their hands and knees blowing things with little little brushes,
23:42
Speaker 1: and it is that UM, meticulous. Yes, might drive some
23:47
Speaker 1: people crazy. It certainly would. Like construction worker guy probably
23:52
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be on an archaeological day, no, But
23:55
Speaker 1: it's funny you bring that up because construction worker guys
23:58
Speaker 1: often find themselves in the midst of an archaeological dig.
24:02
Speaker 1: Construction uh yields a lot of archaeological evidence. Like, for instance,
24:07
Speaker 1: in Miami recently, they came across a two thousand year
24:12
Speaker 1: old Indian settlement. Yeah, the te Questa Indians Um had
24:16
Speaker 1: a little spot in the middle of what's going to
24:19
Speaker 1: be a downtown of Miami's, you know, like their newest development,
24:22
Speaker 1: and the developers are like, fine, just take some pictures
24:25
Speaker 1: and let's get on with it. And the locals are like, no,
24:28
Speaker 1: we need to preserve this better. So they're trying to
24:31
Speaker 1: figure it out. But it happens a lot. Remember when
24:33
Speaker 1: we talked about the huge tunnel underwater tunnel they dug
24:36
Speaker 1: in Turkey. During construction of that, they ran into an
24:39
Speaker 1: ancient site, so they had to bring in archaeologists. That's
24:42
Speaker 1: what's called a rescue excavation, where it's going to be
24:45
Speaker 1: totally destroyed by a group of people who really could
24:48
Speaker 1: care less one way or another what happens to these artifacts? Um,
24:53
Speaker 1: in the name of continued industry. So the archaeologist comes
24:56
Speaker 1: in documents everything, the placement, all that stuff dates it.
25:01
Speaker 1: And then that what what is documented from the excavation
25:05
Speaker 1: that becomes the primary source for everybody else to follow.
25:10
Speaker 1: By excavating, you're destroying inherently. Yes, And each state in
25:15
Speaker 1: the United States has their own state archaeologists. Um. If
25:18
Speaker 1: you go to do a construction project in Rome, let's say,
25:22
Speaker 1: get ready for patients, because when you when you're trying
25:25
Speaker 1: to build something in Rome, I think they give out
25:28
Speaker 1: about building permits a year, but they require an archaeological
25:34
Speaker 1: evaluation of each one. And it's some say it can
25:39
Speaker 1: cripple uh progress in Rome. Yeah, but if you've ever
25:42
Speaker 1: been to Room, like, it's easy to appreciate the fact
25:45
Speaker 1: that they're doing that. Yeah. Sure, I mean it's just
25:47
Speaker 1: the city built up against ancient, ancient ruins. Yeah, it's
25:52
Speaker 1: really really wonderful how they preserved everything. Yeah, it's neat.
25:56
Speaker 1: That's the only place in Italy I've been but un Yeah,
26:00
Speaker 1: it was awesome. I think, Uh someone else with was
26:03
Speaker 1: complaining about how dirty it was, and I was like,
26:05
Speaker 1: it's been here a long time, right, Yeah, you know, no,
26:07
Speaker 1: it does have the funk of age over like the
26:10
Speaker 1: whole thing. But yeah, it's still you just kind of
26:13
Speaker 1: It's not gonna smell like Montreal. Does Montreal smell good?
26:17
Speaker 1: I think Montreal is noted for being pretty clean for
26:20
Speaker 1: a city. You can see that. It's a fastidious city.
26:22
Speaker 1: That's what I've heard. You've never been to Canada, do
26:26
Speaker 1: you haven't? I grew up near the border, so I've
26:28
Speaker 1: been plenty of times. Yeah, and hey, early early spoiler.
26:32
Speaker 1: We may be going out to Canada this fall, to Vancouver. Yeah, Vancouver,
26:38
Speaker 1: r It's listen up. In the near future, we may
26:40
Speaker 1: be coming to do some live show there this fall. Man,
26:43
Speaker 1: they're gonna go nuts if we don't actually go through
26:45
Speaker 1: with this, that they won't remember we're gonna go though, Okay, alright,
26:51
Speaker 1: So we talked a little bit about um, the transition
26:54
Speaker 1: from our from grave robbing to archaeology looting archaeologic sites
27:00
Speaker 1: and is still a thing. It didn't go away completely.
27:04
Speaker 1: So each country, in each state in the United States, like,
27:07
Speaker 1: everyone has their own way to deal with this stuff.
27:09
Speaker 1: There are a lot of archaeological acts that have been
27:12
Speaker 1: passed throughout the world to preserve things and to make
27:14
Speaker 1: sure there's not looting going on. But despite all their
27:18
Speaker 1: best efforts, it still happens. And uh, trying things like
27:23
Speaker 1: putting up a big sign this is don't dig here,
27:26
Speaker 1: do not enter. Sometimes I'm more of a welcome invitation. Yeah,
27:30
Speaker 1: so sometimes they get tricky in uh, in New York
27:32
Speaker 1: they do things like environmentally sensitive do not enter, So
27:35
Speaker 1: they'll try and trick folks into thinking that, you know,
27:38
Speaker 1: all you who enter will die. Um. But people pay
27:43
Speaker 1: money for artifacts still, and there is a black market.
27:45
Speaker 1: People pay money for artifacts, and those people are very
27:48
Speaker 1: frequently called museums well and private collectors. Yeah a lot
27:52
Speaker 1: of times apparently, like dinosaur bones are super hot right now,
27:56
Speaker 1: and Nicholas Cage has one that's contested. Um. It was
28:00
Speaker 1: it was known to have been removed illegally from a
28:05
Speaker 1: site that was never officially recognized um by basically some
28:10
Speaker 1: this couple that goes in and like they're really good
28:12
Speaker 1: at finding dinosaur bones, and then they sell him on
28:15
Speaker 1: the black market and apparently he's got a really awesome skull.
28:20
Speaker 1: Of course he does. Um. He also has a house
28:23
Speaker 1: in New Orleans that was this like a torture murder
28:28
Speaker 1: house in the nineteenth century that this really priestess owned
28:32
Speaker 1: and like that's his house in New Orleans, like the
28:34
Speaker 1: site of just blood baths. Yeah, he's a weird guy, man.
28:39
Speaker 1: I know. When he married Patricia Arquette, he did some
28:43
Speaker 1: crazy list of things, or maybe she came up with
28:47
Speaker 1: a crazy list of things that he had to do
28:49
Speaker 1: to marry her, and uh, he did them all and
28:53
Speaker 1: it was a lot of it was like a big
28:55
Speaker 1: stupid rich person treasure hunt like that was were creative
29:00
Speaker 1: than that. Oh I can't remember, like find me a
29:03
Speaker 1: black rose, um, all these things that are hard to
29:07
Speaker 1: come by. Then he did it and he married her
29:09
Speaker 1: and the divorced her. So it's a happy ending. Um.
29:13
Speaker 1: But the black market, sorry, back to it if you're
29:16
Speaker 1: in Peru. They estimate they have lost about eighteen million
29:18
Speaker 1: dollars worth the artifacts and goods on the smugglers market.
29:22
Speaker 1: And so they their Institute of Culture UM they register
29:27
Speaker 1: that register their historic sites and they require that all
29:31
Speaker 1: the collections are registered. UM. They've partnered with the International
29:35
Speaker 1: Council of Museums and basically all these international museums they're
29:40
Speaker 1: they're trying to get together to thwart the thriving underground
29:46
Speaker 1: archaeological goods, market goods, collectible goods. Sure, all right, but
29:52
Speaker 1: that brings us in. So that brings us to the
29:55
Speaker 1: interesting point on who owns the stuff. That's a great question.
29:58
Speaker 1: For a very long time it was museums UM because
30:02
Speaker 1: they were the ones who sent in professional looters archaeologists
30:08
Speaker 1: at the time UM to go in and basically rob
30:12
Speaker 1: a developing country of its antiquities and riches and history
30:17
Speaker 1: and culture. Basically. Uh. In a lot of cases, the
30:21
Speaker 1: government in charge of the time was totally complicit, Like
30:25
Speaker 1: for example, when um Yale sent in Hiram Bingham to
30:29
Speaker 1: Machu Pichu and he came out with a lot of
30:34
Speaker 1: artifacts from it. The proving government was totally in on
30:37
Speaker 1: it at the time. I'm sure that the high officials
30:40
Speaker 1: were getting tons of kickbacks from Yale for it. But nowadays,
30:44
Speaker 1: a hundred years later, Yale is giving back it's Manchu
30:48
Speaker 1: Pichu artifacts. There's been a big move towards trying to
30:51
Speaker 1: get back things exactly because the proving government has said,
30:56
Speaker 1: wait a minute, like, we're less corrupt than we were before,
30:59
Speaker 1: and this is cultural heritage, and that belongs to us, Like, yeah,
31:03
Speaker 1: you've had it for a hundred years, but like there
31:06
Speaker 1: was ours for thousands of years, so give it back.
31:09
Speaker 1: Not necessarily much. You teach you for thousands of years.
31:11
Speaker 1: But there are plenty of antiquities that museums have had
31:15
Speaker 1: for a very long time, right, but really belong to
31:19
Speaker 1: the source country. Yeah, and that's a big sticking point
31:23
Speaker 1: um every country. Like if if you want to know
31:26
Speaker 1: who owns an artifact, if you find something, let's say, Uh,
31:31
Speaker 1: it's gonna depend on where you are. Every municipality, every state,
31:34
Speaker 1: every country has their own laws as far as finders
31:38
Speaker 1: keepers laws they call them. Uh, if you're in New Zealand,
31:41
Speaker 1: a lot of them are dated by time. Like if
31:42
Speaker 1: it's newer than a certain age, go ahead and keep it.
31:46
Speaker 1: It's older than a certain age, you've got to talk
31:47
Speaker 1: to us about it. Uh, found not older? When it
31:52
Speaker 1: was found? Well, it depends on what country. Some countries
31:54
Speaker 1: have a date on how old it is, but I
31:57
Speaker 1: think the date is when it was found. Yes, certain
32:00
Speaker 1: countries for sure, when it's found, certain it's the age
32:02
Speaker 1: of the object. Um. It just depends on where you are.
32:05
Speaker 1: And but in the date of when it was found
32:08
Speaker 1: is usually the date that that comes after whatever act
32:12
Speaker 1: was passed. Exactly. So in New Zealand, for example, if
32:15
Speaker 1: you found something prior to nineteen seventy six, which is
32:19
Speaker 1: when the Antiquities Act of nineteen seventy five came into effect, UM,
32:23
Speaker 1: you get to keep whatever you find right right. If
32:27
Speaker 1: you found it after nineteen seventy six, then you have
32:30
Speaker 1: to you have to alert the local authorities. If you're
32:34
Speaker 1: in Sweden, UM, that has some pretty interesting laws. They say,
32:38
Speaker 1: if if there's more than one object at a site,
32:42
Speaker 1: then you have to report it to the government. If
32:44
Speaker 1: it's just one thing that you find, you can keep
32:46
Speaker 1: it UM. And they have a finder's reward to encourage
32:50
Speaker 1: people to be honest about it. UM. And if it's
32:53
Speaker 1: only the single object, you still have to report it.
32:56
Speaker 1: If it's partially made of a precious metal or copper alloy,
33:00
Speaker 1: but if it's If you're in Sweden you find an
33:02
Speaker 1: old wooden bowl, right, I love this example, and that's
33:06
Speaker 1: the only thing you find, then you get to keep it. Uh.
33:11
Speaker 1: It's really interesting though. UM. The United States says the
33:14
Speaker 1: National Historic Preservation Act and the Archaeological Resource Protection Act,
33:19
Speaker 1: and they claim I think the site must be at
33:24
Speaker 1: least a hundred years old and remains must be related
33:28
Speaker 1: to past human life or activity. That means you have
33:31
Speaker 1: to report it to the government. So it's like really
33:35
Speaker 1: like granular depending on where you are and what the law.
33:38
Speaker 1: That's just two countries, Like there's there's something called treasure
33:42
Speaker 1: trove law, which is basically it's this, but it has
33:47
Speaker 1: to do with finding a bunch of riches where that
33:52
Speaker 1: are old enough that the owner is clearly now dead,
33:55
Speaker 1: no one can lay claim to it, and that they
33:58
Speaker 1: were placed in a place where, um, they shows intent
34:03
Speaker 1: for them to be retrieved, like they were buried next
34:06
Speaker 1: to a tree or something like that, rather than buried
34:08
Speaker 1: in a grave, because the grave would indicate that they
34:11
Speaker 1: were meant to stay there with the dead body. So
34:13
Speaker 1: if you find a treasure trove, all sorts of laws
34:15
Speaker 1: kick in, like in in uh in the u K.
34:18
Speaker 1: In in England. You know, the Romans were all over
34:21
Speaker 1: that place, so people find like hordes of Roman coins,
34:25
Speaker 1: like when they're killing the ground in their farms, and
34:28
Speaker 1: it used to be like, well that was yours. That's
34:31
Speaker 1: not the case any longer. Yeah, sunken treasure, that's a
34:34
Speaker 1: big controversial area too, because a lot of those are
34:38
Speaker 1: private companies going after what they think is a lot
34:42
Speaker 1: of dough. Do you know the gold? That's where the
34:44
Speaker 1: concept of the camp thing going down with the ship
34:48
Speaker 1: came from. How's that so? Uh? I was listening about
34:51
Speaker 1: the fairy disaster and like the whether or not the
34:54
Speaker 1: captain was supposed to stay on or the Costa concordia.
34:57
Speaker 1: The tradition of the captain staying with the ship isn't
35:00
Speaker 1: that The captains just well, the ship's going down, so
35:02
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to die. The captain is supposed to stay
35:06
Speaker 1: on until the ship is basically totally underwater, and then
35:11
Speaker 1: he can get off. It has nothing to do with
35:13
Speaker 1: him dying. He's supposed to stay on because under maritime law,
35:18
Speaker 1: as long as the captains on the ship, it's not
35:20
Speaker 1: up for salvage. But the moment the captain leaves the ship,
35:23
Speaker 1: it's anybody's anybody who wants to go salvage the thing,
35:27
Speaker 1: like that boat has been abandoned once the captain is
35:29
Speaker 1: off the ship. So the captain is supposed to stay
35:31
Speaker 1: on until it's basically not salvageable anymore. Then he can
35:35
Speaker 1: he can leave that just so if a if a
35:38
Speaker 1: ship were just a partially sink, then then it's still
35:41
Speaker 1: salvageable and there's no captain. Yes, then you can claim it.
35:46
Speaker 1: Apparently that the captain is still you know, on top
35:49
Speaker 1: of the front of the boat, if he's anywhere sticking
35:52
Speaker 1: out of the water. He's like, I'm staying, so you
35:54
Speaker 1: have to stay too, bartender, that's interesting. Hit me up
35:57
Speaker 1: with a balini. Uh. UNESCO in nineteen seventy the UNESCO
36:04
Speaker 1: Convention established tried to establish some international standards for cultural property. Um.
36:10
Speaker 1: But here's the deal with all those international organizations. They
36:13
Speaker 1: can't demand that countries join, but they can encourage it,
36:17
Speaker 1: and more than a country, a hundred countries have ratified
36:20
Speaker 1: it so far. Yeah. But the thing is is like
36:23
Speaker 1: even if you join and ratify it, you can still
36:25
Speaker 1: violate it. International law is so toothless, it's ridiculous. But um,
36:30
Speaker 1: under that convention though, it's like you said, it's usually uh.
36:34
Speaker 1: They usually side with the source country of the object
36:36
Speaker 1: as far as ownership, which is good, and that seems
36:38
Speaker 1: to be the prevailing wind. Now, like the the if
36:42
Speaker 1: the source country wants to lay claim to something, you
36:44
Speaker 1: should give it back. It's part of a cultural heritage
36:47
Speaker 1: that got scattered to the wind in the nineteenth century
36:49
Speaker 1: when museums were again employing basically professional grave robbers to
36:54
Speaker 1: go get them a bunch of stuff for the museum's collections.
36:57
Speaker 1: And now the tides being reversed in a US. That's
37:00
Speaker 1: called repatriation. Remember we talked about that in the um
37:03
Speaker 1: the Shrunken Heads episode, Like those shrunken heads are being
37:06
Speaker 1: repatriated back to the source. Yeah. Part it is something
37:11
Speaker 1: that worked for a long time up until the early
37:13
Speaker 1: twentieth century. And that is basically, when uh, you dig
37:19
Speaker 1: up you let's say, excavate a site and you find
37:20
Speaker 1: a bunch of great artifacts. Um, the country itself keeps
37:24
Speaker 1: most of the stuff, but the digger can keep a
37:29
Speaker 1: couple of things. And they don't spell out exactly how
37:32
Speaker 1: many things because it was part. It wasn't like a law.
37:35
Speaker 1: But for a long time, if you like, you know,
37:37
Speaker 1: excavate a site, like hey, I want to keep these
37:39
Speaker 1: three things, you can have the rest in the Country's
37:41
Speaker 1: like great, that works great. It's like sharing almost, yeah,
37:44
Speaker 1: and it's not almost, it's exactly sharing. And so we're
37:47
Speaker 1: talking about the black market being pretty hot for antiquities
37:50
Speaker 1: and UM artifacts. There's this um group called the International
37:55
Speaker 1: Council of Museums that basically created a list um it's
38:01
Speaker 1: called the Red List that they put out I think
38:04
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, But then they'll put out emergency
38:07
Speaker 1: ones too when suddenly, like a black market in a
38:10
Speaker 1: certain area heats up, and it's pictures of specific items
38:13
Speaker 1: and descriptions saying this item and things like it are
38:18
Speaker 1: most likely to be smuggled and illegally sold in the
38:21
Speaker 1: black market because there's a big market for him right now.
38:24
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to go check out on the like
38:26
Speaker 1: the most wanted list for artifacts. Yeah, but they'll they're like,
38:30
Speaker 1: all the different artifacts that they have are really really
38:33
Speaker 1: cool to just kind of browse through. And they have
38:35
Speaker 1: a by region and country and stuff like that. What's
38:38
Speaker 1: it called, uh, the International Council of Museums. You go
38:42
Speaker 1: to their website and look for the Red lists. Those
38:44
Speaker 1: guys party too. Have you ever been one of those conventions? Accidentally?
38:50
Speaker 1: They are wild? Yeah. If you remember an International Council
38:53
Speaker 1: of Museums convention, you weren't there. You didn't do it right?
38:57
Speaker 1: All right? I think we should finish up with an
38:58
Speaker 1: interesting little bit about the Nazi Party because Hitler in
39:03
Speaker 1: the gang were way into archaeology because they believed if
39:10
Speaker 1: they could find proof that Germans were the original Aryan
39:16
Speaker 1: people's along with Thor and odin the Nordic gods, if
39:20
Speaker 1: they could prove that we were the original people's and
39:23
Speaker 1: we ran the earth, then that would give them the
39:26
Speaker 1: right to go in and take your country. Right. So
39:30
Speaker 1: they weren't just interested in things. They were interested in
39:32
Speaker 1: trying to prove that they owned the world pretty much. Yeah,
39:35
Speaker 1: that they were descended from the Aryan race, which was
39:38
Speaker 1: the proto Indo European group. Yeah, the mythical yeah yeah, yeah,
39:44
Speaker 1: so and that was I was not clear on that,
39:47
Speaker 1: like our did the Aryan race definitely exist? Well, I
39:52
Speaker 1: think the the Nordic gods, yeah, I don't know about that. Well,
39:57
Speaker 1: they would be mythical, but yeah, there were the people
39:59
Speaker 1: who worship them. They were the Arian race, right, I
40:02
Speaker 1: don't know. That's a good question. So I think that
40:04
Speaker 1: there was an Arian race in which we would call
40:07
Speaker 1: the Nordic or Germanic people. So I think whether or
40:11
Speaker 1: not what makes it mythical is the idea of whether
40:14
Speaker 1: it was some pure white race made it some master
40:19
Speaker 1: race in the eyes of the Nazis, so then it
40:21
Speaker 1: may have been a mythical people. We'd love to hear
40:24
Speaker 1: from you if you're an expert on early proto Indo
40:28
Speaker 1: European cultures. It was there a group called the Arians
40:32
Speaker 1: as far as the Nazis were concerned, Yes, there was,
40:35
Speaker 1: and that the Nazis were the new version of that, right, yeah,
40:39
Speaker 1: for sure. And UH and this started even pre war
40:42
Speaker 1: in n Himmler actually founded um, something called the UH.
40:49
Speaker 1: And this is German, of course, uh anina be that's
40:53
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna call it. A h N E N
40:56
Speaker 1: E R b E. Don't you speak German? Yeah, but
40:58
Speaker 1: that it doesn't look like a German word. It's weird. Yeah,
41:02
Speaker 1: it does look a little French. UM. And it was well,
41:05
Speaker 1: it was known as the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society.
41:10
Speaker 1: And one of Hitler's bigs big plans was, you know,
41:12
Speaker 1: when he took control of Germany, he took control of
41:15
Speaker 1: the education system, everything, and he wanted to flood that
41:18
Speaker 1: education system with Nazi propaganda. And so they formed this
41:22
Speaker 1: you know, they call it a think tank, but what
41:24
Speaker 1: they really did was a lot of archaeological digs all
41:27
Speaker 1: over the world. Um, like you said, trying to prove
41:30
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking Croatia, Greece, Russia, Iceland, North Africa.
41:34
Speaker 1: They were going everywhere trying to find traces of what
41:38
Speaker 1: they believe were ancient Germans in the original master race,
41:41
Speaker 1: right and Um. One of the places they went was
41:43
Speaker 1: Iceland because apparently that's where tool t h u l
41:46
Speaker 1: E was, which was the seat of the Nordic gods. Right.
41:52
Speaker 1: And they looked for um something called the Hoff, which
41:56
Speaker 1: was a place where they were supposedly worshiped by the Arians.
42:00
Speaker 1: And they said, we found it, we found this cave,
42:02
Speaker 1: this mystical place of worship. Um. And somebody else came
42:07
Speaker 1: along and said, no, this cave wasn't inhabited until the
42:10
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, so not the hof. Nazis and then the
42:14
Speaker 1: British and the Americans came in occupied Iceland and the
42:18
Speaker 1: Nazis were not able to come back. That's just one
42:21
Speaker 1: example of their failed expeditions. Right. Yeah, they had eighteen
42:25
Speaker 1: archaeological expeditions total, and none of them, uh bore fruit.
42:31
Speaker 1: They were fruitless. They were fruitless. They didn't provide any
42:34
Speaker 1: information that the Nazis were the original master race because
42:37
Speaker 1: they were not. That's right. They were just a bunch
42:42
Speaker 1: of terrible people, all right. I think you can say
42:45
Speaker 1: that I'm taking a stand on Nazis. I dare someone
42:47
Speaker 1: to write in and to defend the Nazis. Yeah, I
42:50
Speaker 1: dare you anything else. Oh you beat me to the punch. No,
42:55
Speaker 1: I don't, man um and uh. If you want to
42:59
Speaker 1: learn more about archaeology, how stuff Works is a veritable
43:05
Speaker 1: library of articles on archaeology, everything you could possibly need
43:09
Speaker 1: to know. Basically, you probably would get a degree if
43:12
Speaker 1: you read everything on archaeology. Not true, you could, okay possibly?
43:18
Speaker 1: Uh and um, just type archaeology into the search part
43:23
Speaker 1: how stuff works. Allow me to spell that for you
43:26
Speaker 1: A R C H A E O, L O G Y.
43:29
Speaker 1: Is that one of those you have to sound out
43:30
Speaker 1: in your head? No? Remember that was the first I
43:33
Speaker 1: was able to spell that word earlier. I remember, but
43:36
Speaker 1: I just know I see it in my head. Okay,
43:39
Speaker 1: I see the letters. I think everyone has those words
43:41
Speaker 1: still though as adults, you sound out that were difficult.
43:45
Speaker 1: One of mine, for some reason is because I always
43:49
Speaker 1: in my head at A B C, A U S
43:50
Speaker 1: C and I still do that in my head. Mine
43:52
Speaker 1: is uh pretty much anything with the C E I yeah,
43:56
Speaker 1: spread oh man, are not just words, and it's even
44:02
Speaker 1: got that accompanying rhyme I before you accept after see.
44:05
Speaker 1: But any time I see a C and there's eyes
44:07
Speaker 1: and he's involved, I have to go back and correct myself.
44:10
Speaker 1: Basically that's called putting learning into practice. That's a dumb
44:14
Speaker 1: I'm a dummy now okay, Oh speaking of speaking of dumb,
44:19
Speaker 1: I haven't yet, which means I can still go on forever.
44:22
Speaker 1: Go ahead. There are new T shirts available for people
44:25
Speaker 1: who like Don't Be Dumb. Yes, Josh's uh Tony Award
44:28
Speaker 1: winning web series, Uh would you have me confused? With
44:31
Speaker 1: Neil Patrick Harris? Again, I think it's great. I think
44:34
Speaker 1: any time if you're getting feedback where people are saying
44:37
Speaker 1: this is the best thing I've ever seen and other
44:39
Speaker 1: people are saying I don't get it at all, or
44:41
Speaker 1: I hate you for making this, that means you're doing
44:43
Speaker 1: something genius. Um. So, if you aren't familiar with Don't
44:47
Speaker 1: Be Dumb, you can check it out on our website
44:49
Speaker 1: or on our YouTube channel. If you are familiar and
44:52
Speaker 1: you want a T shirt, you can go to our store. Um,
44:55
Speaker 1: if you go to stuff you should know dot com
44:57
Speaker 1: you can get to our store in the top navigation
44:59
Speaker 1: and there are Josh sent me t shirt. Yeah that's great. Thanks,
45:03
Speaker 1: that's a good one. But anyway, since I said all that,
45:07
Speaker 1: I imagine chuck. Finally, it's a time at long last
45:11
Speaker 1: for listener and mail. I'm gonna call this um thieving mailman.
45:20
Speaker 1: I think this is sorry thieving garbage man. Um you're like,
45:24
Speaker 1: oh yeah, hey, guys, listen to how tipping works and
45:27
Speaker 1: have a funny story. Um. A couple of years ago
45:30
Speaker 1: at Christmas, my mom wanted to leave our garbage man
45:32
Speaker 1: a nice tip. She says, garbage man. By the way,
45:35
Speaker 1: we're not saying that because I know sanitation workers proper term.
45:39
Speaker 1: These are Emily Crawford's words. I should preface this by
45:42
Speaker 1: saying that our garbage man isn't like the typical city
45:45
Speaker 1: pickup guys. He has a small business and he comes
45:48
Speaker 1: to collect people's trash at their garages with his pickup truck.
45:51
Speaker 1: They must live in the sticks. My parents have a
45:54
Speaker 1: long driveway and don't want to drag the trash can
45:56
Speaker 1: to the end of the driveway, so they hired this guy.
45:59
Speaker 1: My mom put some money and a card and a
46:01
Speaker 1: white envelope um as the tip, and she didn't want
46:04
Speaker 1: to tape the envelope to the trash bags for fear
46:07
Speaker 1: of it being thrown away by accident. And it was wendy,
46:09
Speaker 1: so she decided to take it to this iron horsehead
46:11
Speaker 1: that we have sitting by a planter next to our
46:14
Speaker 1: garage doors. She attached an image, but I don't have it.
46:18
Speaker 1: Just imagine, you know, it's a little ring to his nose.
46:21
Speaker 1: Later that day, when my mom was, no, this horseheads
46:25
Speaker 1: because they have it like on the side. Yeah, they do.
46:28
Speaker 1: It's on the side like from their bridle. I'm talking
46:32
Speaker 1: about this picture I saw, trust me, I had a
46:34
Speaker 1: ring through its nose. Yeah. It was like a knocker show. Okay,
46:37
Speaker 1: I see that kind of thing. Uh So, later that day,
46:40
Speaker 1: when my mom was I love that I looked at
46:42
Speaker 1: this picture. You're like, no, it didn't look later that
46:46
Speaker 1: are or you're lying eyes. Later that day, when my
46:51
Speaker 1: mom was coming back home from running errands, she saw
46:53
Speaker 1: that the trash had been picked up and the horsehead
46:55
Speaker 1: was gone. The garbage man must have assumed it was
46:59
Speaker 1: a gift for him. Well, and he took the envelope
47:01
Speaker 1: in the horsehead. It wasn't valuable, but we also didn't
47:05
Speaker 1: want to give it away. We never got it back
47:07
Speaker 1: and never brought it up to the garbage man. But
47:10
Speaker 1: I laugh when I think about his reaction was probably
47:13
Speaker 1: what the heck? They gave me this envelope and a horsehead? Uh.
47:17
Speaker 1: And I just hope you put it in his house somewhere,
47:19
Speaker 1: So I hope you get a little laugh out of this.
47:21
Speaker 1: We did from Emily Crawford. Nice, thanks a lot, Emily Crawford.
47:25
Speaker 1: That's good stuff. And somewhere there that sanitation worker has
47:29
Speaker 1: your your family heirloom. Um, that's a good story. You
47:35
Speaker 1: know what. It reminded me of what the greatest movie
47:38
Speaker 1: starring Emilia Westeves and Charlie Sheen ever made, Men at Work.
47:42
Speaker 1: I never saw that. What I did not see it.
47:45
Speaker 1: That is a good movie. You need to see that.
47:48
Speaker 1: I know they're sanitation guys and they find something valuable,
47:50
Speaker 1: probably that someone else wants and so they're in trouble
47:52
Speaker 1: for it. But you just wrote the script. Yeah, no,
47:55
Speaker 1: it's but all the hijinks set ensue in the meantime
47:59
Speaker 1: are hilarious. Great supporting cats too, including Chainsaw from Summer
48:04
Speaker 1: school Boy. Man. I love your taste of movies. It
48:08
Speaker 1: runs the gamut, So uh? Is that it? That's it?
48:11
Speaker 1: If you want to tell us a cute story about
48:13
Speaker 1: your family, we love to hear those. You can tweet
48:16
Speaker 1: to us at s y SK podcast. You can join
48:18
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
48:20
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
48:22
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com and join us at our home on
48:26
Speaker 1: the web, our place for great t shirts. Stuff you
48:28
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
48:36
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com