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From Ruins to Relics: Exploring Britain's Pompeii, a Hidden Ivory Pyx, and Denmark's Earliest Known Immigrant - Ep 269
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This week we have 3 archaeology news stories. First, a bronze age site known as Must Farm has been called Britain’s Pompeii, and we look at why it has been given that name. Then, a fragmented ivory Pyx was found hidden in a Christian church. And finally, new dietary analysis of a Danish Bog body tells a story of neolithic immigration between very different communities.
Links
- TeePublic
- Rodsteradventures (Instagram - follow us if you want us to make an RV podcast!)
- Bronze Age bonanza: The largest hoard of Bronze Age items has been unearthed at ‘Britain’s Pompeii’ (Apple News)
- ‘Britain’s Pompeii’ reveals Bronze Age village frozen in time
- 'Very special' 1,500-year-old Christian artifact discovered
- Stone Age Bog Body Lived Between Two Worlds (Apple News)
Contact
- Chris Webster [email protected]
- Rachel Roden [email protected] RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/archaeology-podcast-network?ref_id=5724
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Transcript
Introduction to The Archaeology Show
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
Episode 269 Overview: Britain's Pompeii and More
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 269. On today's show, we talk about Britain's Pompeii, an ivory pix, and Denmark's first immigrant. Let's dig a little deeper. This is RV Man reporting. I mean coffee man. I mean, I mean podcast man. Should we end this now?
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome to the show. My name is Christopher Webster. Oh, you full named yourself. but You never full name yourself. Now I'm going to get internet trolled. There goes my data. That's not your middle name. Oh yeah. Go ahead. No, I'm not doing my new one. Oh, you're not going to do it? No, no, no. Okay. Then I will get to it for real. Oh, draw the line there. Draw the line. Okay. Even though like all my information's out there. Yeah. So it's pretty easy to find. What other information is out there about me? It's not really about me. That was a bad segue. I'm gonna say it anyway.
Merchandise Alert: Archaeology-Themed Designs
00:01:13
Speaker
So there's a link in your show notes for our Tea Publix store. That's by our, I mean the Archaeology Podcast Network. And it's gonna take you to a new design that some of Tea Publix designers were kind enough to work with us on. And it's for the Archaeology show specifically. And it's, when you see it,
00:01:33
Speaker
I feel like I have to explain it a little bit, but when you see it, what they were going for is a bunch of like archeology tools arranged like a cityscape. Yeah, I think it looks like that. And then a couple of microphones too, because yeah because we asked for some sort of podcasting element to be added to it. I i think ah that comes across. right Now, here's the thing. It's going to open up as a t-shirt, and you don't have to get a t-shirt if you don't want to. If you scroll down, they have hats. They have like a trucker hat, and they call it like a dad hat, which is but like just a regular hat, I guess. It's not a trucker hat. Is that what that is now? Is it dad hat? Yeah. Do other people in other countries call the like white front with a design and then like the mesh back a trucker hat, I'm wondering?
00:02:11
Speaker
I think that is pretty universally trucker hat. I mean, they have truckers, but do they call them trucker hats? Yes. I think, well, I don't know, but yeah.
Broadcasting from Niagara Falls
00:02:20
Speaker
So where are we this week? Oh yeah. So we're in, and well, we're in Youngstown, New York, but we're right outside Niagara falls. Yes. I'm so excited. I've never been in Niagara falls. It's a bucket list item for me. So we're going to be doing that this week along with celebrating the fourth of July. So. yeah Yeah, the Independence Day yeah of the United States. Independence from our British overlords, right? Yeah, pretty much. Sorry, British listeners. I know. Speaking of British listeners, ah we must talk about this next article. Yes, we must. Yes, I am drowning with sinking, waterlogged. I'm out of things to say. Yeah, I don't know. yeah you You lost me. Go ahead. i know Explain your site. Anyway, so there is a site in Britain.
Discovering Britain's Pompeii: Must Farm
00:03:05
Speaker
and And in fact, I got to say first, like this, this article is, is kind of all over the place right now because it was picked up by CNN yeah and they promoted it. that That's not one of the, is that what, is that the one we have linked? Yeah, I linked to two of them, but I like the CNN article better. that The BBC country one or whatever is not as good as the CNN one.
00:03:26
Speaker
Well, either way, I'm not really sure why this even came out. It's like somebody decided to write an article about this, and then it's possible that they did actually release some more information. I think they did. This is coming from a press release. But Must Farm is what we're talking about, and it's a site in Britain, and we're going to talk about that. But it's been executed for a while, and they actually have kind of a whole thing going on there where you can go and tour it and you can see it and they've got this whole educational deal that they've had for a really long time. yeah right and there's There's just a whole bunch going on at Must Farm that you can learn from and you can learn about Bronze Age Britain and they've just got a whole big thing going on there. so It's not like if this was just found last week you know or even a couple of months ago on a CRM project or something. this is this is
00:04:08
Speaker
Not new information. No, but I think they have done more analysis and figured out why it was preserved so well and like what what circumstances led to the way it is now. Which is really unique. Yeah, it is very unique, which is what we're going to talk about. And they actually, so Musfordham, first of all, is located near Peterborough in the county of Cambridgeshire in England, which as an American, we all know, geography is terrible. I didn't know where that was, but basically it's like kind of directly north of London. Yeah. on the the eastern coast, or close to the eastern coast. So that's sort of where you're at. Yeah, it's a Bronze Age site, which for anyone who just doesn't know what the Bronze Age means, first off, get your act together. Second, that's about 2,850 years ago. And for reference, this is approximately eight centuries before the Romans arrived. So so the Romans basically gave them nothing. yes In this case, the Romans were not involved. So aside from getting nothing from the Romans, what did they do with themselves? Now the reason this site is so unique and they actually call it Britain's Pompeii is because the village was essentially frozen in time. Yeah, like Pompeii. And the reason it is, is because a fire swept through the structures, forced everyone to abandon it quickly and practically in the middle of whatever they were doing. So that's the reason why it looks the way it does today.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah. And they couldn't rescue animals like their lambs, which were trapped and then burned alive. Yeah. There were stews still in pots. There was even wooden spoons still in a bowl with half eaten porridge. It's crazy. Yeah. Like they literally like got up and left and like that was that. Yeah. And most Bronze Age sites have perhaps a few artifacts, maybe the shadow of a post hole in the soil. That's partly because they are sites that were kind of picked over by the people who left because they didn't run out in the middle of them. And also because of poor preservation, but this site, however, it's it's a gold mine. They have the actual posts for the structures and many other well-preserved wood and textile artifacts, which are usually part of that missing majority that we don't get. So this is very, very unique as far as preservation goes.
00:06:17
Speaker
So yeah, there's actually a reason it's actually really well preserved because the fire burned everything up. So everybody left and it it essentially burned the structures that were built on stilts over this river and the floors gave out and everything just kind of settled down on the floor of the river. And they said that this kind of a river, this, this sort of vegetation, nothing's really changed in the last 3000 years. So that would have had a lot of like vegetation in the river, which kind of softened the, the descent, which is why there were so many intact pots and things like that. It was kind of more marshy and not like a rushing river situation. it was yeah It's like watery vegetation pillows that it landed on. Yes, watery vegetation pillows. Yes, that's exactly yeah what you can think of it as. Wow.
00:07:02
Speaker
well
00:07:05
Speaker
I'm not right. Alright, so that's the next t-shirt we have coming out. Watery Vegetation Pillows. Watery Vegetation Pillows, yes. yeah So anyway, that's why this stuff was so well preserved. So it was it was burned and charred and then fell down into the water and then silted in and all those, you know, in a in a low oxygen environment and all those things came together and said, now you're Pompeii. Pompeii was covered in ash and and all these things. So things were killed people and well, I don't have any people here, but you know there were you know all the animals and things like that. yeah And that's why everything was so well preserved. So yeah, it seems like most of the people got out of here. So it's just like the things people had that are left behind. so yeah But I mean, the preservation is so good that you can even see like the axe marks in the wood yeah as if they were made just you know last week. So yeah, it's cool.
00:07:55
Speaker
So excavations here revealed a total of about four roundhouses and a square entranceway structure that would have been about six and a half feet tall. There was also a perimeter fence of sharpened posts that were about six and a half feet tall. Yeah. And they think that the site was originally approximately twice that size, but quarrying in the 20th century destroyed any other remains of the, of the village. Yeah. They found 128 ceramic artifacts, including jars, bowls, cookware, and these fragments represent 64 different vessels, which were in use at the time of the fire. And they also found like what were stored pots too. They were nested neatly one inside of another. So, you know, I guess they didn't have time to clean off the shelves when they dropped their porridge bowl and run out. yeah
00:08:40
Speaker
There are textiles made from flax linen that had a soft velvety feel with neat seams and hems. And they haven't been able to identify these specific articles of clothing. This is just like pieces of of fabric that have seams in them. So, yeah but I'm like, well, are we sure that we're talking about clothing? It could have been anything that fabric, you could have been linens of some sort, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to have been clothing. They don't know what it is. They just have the fabric remains basically. It's kind of in blankets, kind of anything. Yeah, anything like that. Yeah. Well, flax linen, I mean, that would probably be something you put on your body because it's like soft and higher quality. Other stuff would probably be lower quality, but yeah.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah, some of the wooden artifacts found include boxes and bowls carved from willow, alder, and maple. 40 wooden bobbins, many with thread still attached. Yeah, that's cool. They also found 15 wooden buckets. And one of those is my absolute favorite artifact that I've read about recently. It has tons of cut marks on the base. And what that indicates is that they would flip the bucket over and use the base of it as a sort of impromptu cutting surface. And like, if anybody has ever worked on an archaeological site where you have those orange buckets from Home Depot all around, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Those buckets flipped over, become a surface for whatever you might need to do. I love that. And I don't agree with that. Oh, you don't? No, I disagree with these archaeologists. It tells me that they're boring and they have no imagination because these were clearly drums. Oh, clearly drums. You would flip this over. Were you using like an axe to make drum sounds then? Listen, when you're done chopping wood and the only thing you have in your hand is an axe, you're gonna make a beat. Okay, all right, sure. Yeah, you're gonna make a beat. Okay, got it. So somebody else is gonna start doing some beatboxing and the only thing you have is your axe and your bucket. Yeah, axe and your, yep. You're gonna do it. What else do you need? An axe and a bucket. What else do you need? Yeah, for sure. Awesome.
Social Structure Insights from Must Farm
00:10:36
Speaker
All right, so now the question is still, why did this fire happen? And and we'll go ahead and say the answer. They don't know. They still don't know. They're never going to know. No, they're never going to know. They have some clues. They believe it happened in the late summer or early fall because the trapped lambs, poor babies that we talked about earlier, were in the range of three to six months old. And that means that they would have been born in the spring, which means it was summer or early fall when they died. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it could have been accidental could have been deliberate. They could have been attacked Yeah, um they found a stack of spears with ten foot shafts that could indicate warfare between communities was a thing I mean, of course they would have had Yeah, I mean I have to have something to defend themselves, but I was like could have been used for hunting too Yeah, I was like do this do these spears mean warfare or does it just mean um like hunting? So yeah Yeah. They didn't find any direct evidence though. So, and it would be really hard to find evidence of what actually started the fire. Yeah. I think they even said they had like an arson investigator, like look at it to see if they like look at the remains and see if anything looked like, you know, the smoking gun or whatever, but yeah nothing came from that. So yeah. But it is pretty cool to be able to draw conclusions about everyday life from what was left because a lot of times when people leave a site, well, they take a lot of the important stuff with them yeah and they leave broken stuff in trash behind, ye which you can tell a lot about somebody from the trash that leave behind. But man, you can tell a lot more about their actual like day to day behavior, yeah you know, when they just drop and run. Yeah. One of the researchers described it as a, as a puzzle, right? And like normally out of a 500 piece puzzle, you've got, you know, 20 or 30 pieces at an archeological site. Well, this side is like 250 or 300 of those pieces, which is yeah really, really great. The contents of the four houses were remarkably consistent, which is interesting. And each of those houses had kind of like a toolkit that includes sickles, axes, gouges, and handheld razors. I think the kind of somewhat equality between the houses is interesting too. It kind of gives an insight into what the social standings of these people were, but we'll talk about that in a minute.
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, and the houses actually had distinct activity zones within them as well, similar to your modern home. home yeah you have ah You have a bathroom, you have a kitchen, and you have a bedroom, you know you have a craft room. yeah yeah Yeah, so the kitchen was in the east, storage and weaving in the south and southeast. And then there's a penning area for the lambs as well as a sleeping area in the northwest. And that was fairly consistent across all of the structures as well. so I thought this was so strange. They don't know where the doorway was for each house. Isn't that a little sus? Like how do you not immediately know where that is, right? yeah That I thought was weird. I think it was in the middle and they just like floated down the river and then came up through it all. Right. Well, you do have those structures in the Southwest where people really did go in through the roof. So yeah like that, I guess it's a possibility, but it seems unlikely in this case. Maybe they came up from underneath. Who knows?
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, they also had some, I guess they call them impractical artifacts, including glass and amber beads, but you know, people have stuff like that just because they were. But they were left behind, right? and Well, yeah, but they couldn't also grab stuff. Yeah. You know, but we don't normally get that kind of stuff at sites because that's the kind of thing people would take with them. Yeah. I thought this was so crazy. There's apparently the skull of a woman that was quote-unquote smooth from touch and they are speculating that it was some kind of morbid keepsake. Like they rubbed grandma's head every time they came in? Yeah, I mean, okay, I don't know. That feels like a stretch to me. I don't know about you. You know you don't know what they did 3,000 years ago.
00:14:05
Speaker
But how can you say that it's smooth from touch, from a person? Can you really tell that? Oh, I think you can. Well, these guys know what a skull is supposed to feel like. That's just been defleshed, basically, and sitting in the ground. Skulls and bones and things like that are very different that have just been handled. You know what I mean? Yeah. So the lab analysis of the porridge that we mentioned earlier revealed that it was mixed with animal fat. Yeah. Delicious. There were traces of venison and honey in another vessel, which actually sounds pretty good. Might end up for dinner tonight. Which suggests they were eating honey glazed venison. I don't know about honey glazed. Doesn't that see another reach, right? I pulled that directly from the article.
00:14:49
Speaker
Can we really say honeyglaze and venison or was there like honey in this bowl at one time and also venison in this bowl at another time? Like I don't know how to know that to put them together like that. Yeah. So anyway, there's also a lot of crap in this article. No, they found some dog poop. Yep. They found poop. Yep. Of course they did. And analyzing that, which you can find a lot of good stuff in there, um, indicates that the dogs were fed table scraps or I think probably more likely. I mean dogs were kind of probably still becoming dogs. I mean, it was 3000 years ago, which you're still three to 6,000 years into when dogs became domesticated. So, but still even then,
00:15:27
Speaker
Dogs are dogs, right? They were probably just taking whatever they could. yeah And probably still, i they didn't have dog food. So dogs ate people food. Yeah, they ate people food. But people also ate pretty good food. yeah so Probably a lot of protein, know the typical, what you would think. yeah so it's not it's not I don't think that's like too crazy. no yeah What else are they going to eat? yeah yeah Well, in addition to dog poop, they also had human coprolites. Coprolites are fossilized, you know, people poop. And those showed that at least a few of the people had intestinal worms. yeah So that must have been fun for them. I think they probably always did.
00:16:06
Speaker
The amount of refuse or midden indicates that they occupied the site for just nine months or maybe up to a year before the fire happened. They're looking at sort of the layers of refuse to come up with that conclusion and like the seasonal, there's like a seasonal rotation of refuse and layers that you can kind of look for. So that's where they come up with that idea. So supporting the theory that they were there for only nine months to a year before the fire is that a lot of the wood that they found Was unseasoned and effectively still green. So yeah takes time for wood to not be green anymore. I guess Yeah, there's also I guess no evidence of insects or animals that usually found an association with Wooden human homes like beetles and stuff like that. Yep. Another thing to show that they hadn't lived there that long. Yeah
00:16:51
Speaker
that we kind of alluded to this earlier but the equal contents and sizes of the houses indicate that life in a small village like this might have been a little less hierarchical than you know is originally thought or talked about you know in other sites maybe in a larger community that you would have you know a leader in the hierarchy but this one just doesn't see it seems like everybody was kind of living on an equal level so it's kind of hard to say that for sure since half the structures are missing. So you don't know, maybe there was a mansion on the other side of the village that is not included here and we don't know about, but yeah. But I think it is interesting that the houses they do have are all very, very equal. It makes you wonder if it's like a family, a family community maybe where did there is no one person over another or yeah richer than or has more than for whatever reason, they just kind of all lived equally together. All right. Yeah.
Transition to Christian Artifact Discussion
00:17:44
Speaker
Okay, well that's about enough on Must Farm. Go check it out. Check out the article and article links that we have in there and you can probably just Google Must Farm and find a whole bunch of stuff because like I said, they've been publishing on that for a while. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. All right. Well, let's take a break and on the other side, we'll head to Austria and find out why Jesus abandoned a church there 1500 years ago.
00:18:05
Speaker
Welcome back to the archeology show episode 269. And this article is from Newsweek and it's called a very special episode of blossom. No, it's called a very special. Where did that even come from? I don't know. They always said it's a very special episode. I don't remember that at all, but you know I was like five. Very special 1500 year old Christian artifact discovered. I mean, they're putting very special on, but you know, Yeah, very special in quotes, but it was <unk> it's very it's very cool. so It was broken and buried by the church, so let's find out how special it was. Anyway, so this artifact is actually a round container known as a PICS P-Y-X and was found during excavations at a fifth to sixth century church in Urshin, Southern Austria.
The Ivory Pix Discovery in Austria
00:18:55
Speaker
This discovery is unique according to the excavation leader Gerald Grabber. We're going to go with that from the University of Innsbruck. And it's partly unique because of the materials made of ivory. And also it was covered in elaborate Christian motifs. So apparently Christians back then did not care about elephants or rhinos yeah or anything else with ivory. Is rhino horn ivory? I can't remember. No. Definitely elephants. There are only 40 ivory examples of a pix like this known worldwide. And the last time one was found in archaeological excavation was a hundred years ago.
00:19:34
Speaker
So most of the other examples that we have are preserved in churches or museums. They've been handed down through time from one one church to another, basically, as they closed and moved on. It's just not the kind of thing that would have been left behind in a church. But this one was. Yeah, this one was found within a marble shrine hidden under the altar in a side chapel of this church. And these boxes were usually removed when a church was abandoned because they were sacred and also probably expensive. I would think so made of ivory, right? Yeah. I mean, this thing, even if ivory was like plentiful for the church and easy to get, I mean, who knows? I mean, there was a lot of artistry and you know, whoever, whoever made this probably, you know,
00:20:15
Speaker
and I'm sure they donated it because they were Christian or whatever, but either way either way it would have been something that would would have been prized, right? So, yeah. Yeah. And the reason they were so fancy and special is because they would have been used to hold sacred items like the relics of a saint. Yeah. And by relics, we mean body parts, yeah yeah which is gross. yes yeah and yeah yeah The whole thing is is a thing that we don't have to get into, but yeah, that's what they would have read. Yeah. This example is fragmented, which is fancy for broken and the way it was layered. Are you making fun of the way I wrote my notes? Yes.
00:20:51
Speaker
The way it was layered in the marble shrine, they think it was already broken in late antiquity when it was buried. So, like I said, it was broken and then they just kind of left it there and buried it. Yeah, it sounds like it probably broke accidentally because it's not like anybody would break this thing on purpose, right? But the thing is, and this is sort of a guess by the people who are doing the excavation, but they are guessing that even though it broke, for whatever reason, they carefully preserved all those pieces in the shrine because it was still considered sacred since it was in contact with a relic at some point. So if you make contact with the relic you must be taken care of I guess even if you broke and aren't usable anymore. So if I just like ran into a church and touched a relic I would become sacred?
00:21:35
Speaker
I don't know if it works like that exactly, but yeah. try So back to the box itself, the decorations depict a variety of biblical scenes, including Moses receiving the laws from God at Mount Sinai in the old Testament. How do you get to New York city? Anyway, that's a hospital. Oh yeah. There's also a man on a chariot with two horses and a hand coming out of the clouds, pulling the figure up into heaven. And this could be a depiction of the ascension of Christ. Yep. The pigs fragments are really fragile because ivory absorbs moisture and gets very soft over time. So they had to be really careful with it. They have to work to conserve it since it was discovered and is now in stable condition. Yeah. I think that's why information is finally coming out about it because they didn't have to focus on the conservation so much and they could focus on the analysis. Yeah.
00:22:25
Speaker
This church is that they're excavating at is part of a hilltop community that was established in the late third, early fourth century. And at that time, the area was still under Roman control. yeah So kind of in a transition time though, because we got Roman control, but Christian church. so And that probably speaks to why it was abandoned around the year 610. It might've been sort of an indirect result of the void of the Romans leaving the area and and the the empire going away. so yup yeah
00:22:56
Speaker
In addition to the church, they found a number of dwellings, a cistern, and a second Christian church. Yeah. Gotta have your church options, right? Yep. All right. Well, that's pretty much it for that. I'm sure they're if they're still working on it, there could be more coming out in the future and I'm sure we'll see it. All right. Well, on the other side of the break, we're going to talk about bog bodies. I love bog bodies. Back in a minute.
00:23:22
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, episode 269. And the link in your show notes to this one is from National Geographic, but it's Apple News. and And through our Apple News subscription, we actually get access to the National Geographic magazine. And Rachel couldn't find the link to this online, which probably means it's just in the magazine, yeah unless you have Apple News. Yeah, we still haven't been able to figure out if those articles end up on the internet later at some point. At some point. I'm not sure, but. This is kind of an article, but it's in like their news section. Yeah. So it's not, I don't know. It's not like really an article yeah kind of is, but it is like super interesting. I really enjoyed this one because it was something I had never heard of before. And I love a good bog body. They're, they're so great. They preserve so well. We learned so much about whoever that person was and wherever they were from when they were preserved in a bog. So.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, so the headline here is Stone Age Bog Body Lived Between Two Worlds, subtitled New Details About Vitrup Man Whose Battered Body Was Found in a Bog Suggest He Was an Old Style Hunter Gather Who Became a Farmer. And I wanted to read that because, you know, we always give the name to these things that were found like man or woman of Vitrup Man because he was found. But, you know, you never get that title when you're alive. I just want to be known. Are you going to be Monroe man? I just want to be like RV man. Well, it's where you're found. Oh yeah, not where you're born. Where you're found. No, I just want to determine what kind of man I am now. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Because while you're alive, you should be able to say what kind of thing you are. Yeah. Like you're a yarn woman. Obviously. Like what else would I be? Yeah.
Vitrep Man: Denmark's First Immigrant?
00:24:59
Speaker
All right. Well, that's the deal. I'll make sure that's on your headstone or whatever. Okay. Which one?
00:25:05
Speaker
Which one? Which one? Like Podcast Man or RV Man or... We're gonna have to keep working on it. and do You don't have a logical thing. You have many things. Probably just like Coffee Man. Coffee Man works.
00:25:19
Speaker
Alright, well this guy, Vitrope Man, yeah which he didn't know about, was found in northern Denmark near the town of Vitrope. Go figure. yeah yeah And his fragmented skull was found by Pete Diggers in 1915, so we've had his his remains for a while. And Pete Diggers is not the name of a man. No, it's not. But it's the name of... Pete's P-E-A-T, Pete. Pete Diggers was digging around. Oh, man. No, these are people who actually dig for Pete. Yes, that would be used as a fuel source for anything, yeah. Or to make lagerwool and scotch whiskey. Very important. I don't know if they're doing that 5,000 years ago, but oh, well, the diggers were in 1915, so So while I just you know gave away the the future of this episode right there, the remains date to about 5,000 years ago, right as agriculture was beginning in the Northern Europe area. Yes. Along with the skull, a wooden club.
00:26:16
Speaker
believed to have killed him, which I think is a stretch, cow bones and a ceramic vessel were found in the bog. I don't know if it's a stretch. It makes sense to me, but now whatever you got to discard your, your murder weapon, right? and I mean, it was like a mic drop. I'm like, bam, he's dead. Maybe. Yeah. So, VitrepMan was included in the 2014 study of Denmark's genetic prehistory, and he was found to have different DNA than other remains in Denmark, and that indicates that he grew up somewhere else. Yeah. So, that's kind of what started this whole thing, like, oh, he's not actually originally Denmarkian Danish, do you think that is? Yeah, Danish. He's not originally Danish. Yes. So, who where is he from? Yeah, 5,000 years ago, Denmarkians were... um
00:27:03
Speaker
No, Denmark was occupied by farmers, known as the Neolithic funnel beaker culture. yeah So they were hipsters before it was hip, farming along. That's a pretty good name right there. I know, right? Funnel beaker. In the same time period, further north in present-day Norway and Sweden, the communities were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, so they hadn't quite caught up to the farming culture. Also, they're like, it's really cold up here, how are we supposed to farm? Yeah, like what are we growing, guys? What are we growing? Yeah, like I jammed something into the ground and it broke.
00:27:35
Speaker
Yeah. So you've got soft ground like for one month a year. Yeah. Yeah. So using traditional archeology and advanced biotechnology, new research shows vitra man was closely related to the Northern hunter gatherers. And
Lifestyle Changes in Vitrep Man's Era?
00:27:49
Speaker
dietary analysis shows that he left the hunter gatherer culture as a teenager and lived the rest of his life as a farmer in Denmark. Yeah. And I don't remember seeing them say how old he was when he died. They might not have been able to get a good beat on that one, but I don't remember seeing that either. Yeah. But anyway, I mean, he was not a teenager anymore. That's for sure. He was a man. Yeah. His diet went from mostly marine fish or mammals to cereals, milk, goats, and sheep. It's so crazy how you can see that transition in the teeth basically, right? Or in the bones. I'm i'm assuming teeth. That's the thing with these these National Geographic articles is they're this sort of like
00:28:26
Speaker
really nice and polished surface level story that somebody puts together. yeah And I do appreciate it from a reading perspective. It's a very nice story to read, but they don't get into the nitty gritty details of the science behind what they're reporting on. But it's natural geographics, I kind of trust it, so it's probably fine. So they say in the article he is technically the earliest immigrant in Danish history. God, that's so stupid. I love it. Saying stuff like that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Nope, I'm here for it. I love it. What about the people who were in Denmark?
00:29:01
Speaker
I mean, they got to there somehow. Yeah. So there were actually people who were earlier immigrants. For sure. But we don't have evidence of those. Do we? Well, they weren't earliest evidence. They didn't just sprout up in Denmark. But if you move incrementally, like further north, does it really count as immigration? Whereas he went from one very different population to another very different population. So like maybe that is what defines immigration here rather than just population expansion. yeah i mean moving from one population into another population is the definition of immigration but
00:29:35
Speaker
So bad. I think I just won that argument. Yes. Score one for me. Wow. Yeah. We just still don't know why he did it. Yeah. We definitely don't know why he moved from replacement other and they do a lot of speculation in this article. Yeah. One theory is that he was brought there as a slave and, and he was basically traded for. Yeah, Yeah. They were making high quality axes I mean, and moving from one daggers population into out of Flint in another Denmark at that time. population is So the definition of I immigration. guess, you know, a teenage boy for like a really good knife would be, you know, A reasonable trade, maybe? Like this kid is super annoying. We'll trade you for that knife. Since for me, that seems like a little too like cutthroat or something. Like who would have traded a child, essentially a child for some really good stone tools. That doesn't seem super likely, but. And it's entirely possible as well that there could have been a common trade of maybe like an, I don't know, maybe not indentured servite, but maybe some sort of, some sort of apprenticeship or, you know, work kind of thing. Like, Hey, go down there for a while and then come back. But maybe they just didn't treat him very well. Or maybe he was caught stealing or something like that because he dies kind of horribly. We find out here in a minute, but you know, either way,
00:30:48
Speaker
I don't know. There could have been some other reason, but there are bog bodies. We have found quite a few bog bodies, but we might just not have enough evidence to know what the relationship was between Denmark and their neighbors to the north. you know Yeah, and I don't think they had enough of his remains to like look for you know joint issues that might have happened if he was doing hard labor or something like that. So they probably can't speak to yeah to that kind of long-term trauma on his body. But one thing they do know is that he definitely would have traveled there by boat. Both cultures would have had seafaring technology at this time. So he definitely traveled by a boat. So that leads into one of the other theories is that maybe he was part of a Scandinavian trader group.
00:31:32
Speaker
And he went there and maybe he willingly you know stayed in and moved there on purpose. Maybe it's too cold for him in the North. Yeah, maybe I was like, well, maybe he fell in love with a girl and like decided to stay behind and and win her heart. and That seems like such a like yeah romantic teenage boy thing to do, right? And then he knocked her up. yeah Or maybe he knocked her up and had to stay behind. I don't know. Didn't marry her. And then knocked up her sister. Oh. And then dad clubbed him in the head eight times. Oh, yeah. You know, if... Dad and his brothers. No, but see, the thing is, is that he was older. He wasn't a teenager anymore when he died.
00:32:05
Speaker
Okay, but he knocked up other people in the village. You don't have to be a teenager to knock people up. Oh, that's true. Right. Because we found that we find that his head was actually clubbed in, looked like he was struck about eight times, yeah and and they think it was the club he was found with. But again, maybe it was his club. I mean, who knows, right? Yeah. He could have been trying to defend himself. There's no way to prove that it was the club that he was killed with. True, there's not. I wonder if they could do some like microscopic analysis on it to see if there's like DNA from the skull and on the club or that kind of thing. Yeah, I don't know. The bog probably ruined it. Yeah, it probably did. But but yeah, i mean it's it's pretty brutal. So back to what happened to him, maybe he he was a thief or something and that was how they handled handled his punishment. Who even knows? i mean but
00:32:50
Speaker
Well, and they're even saying maybe he was a slave who was sacrificed to the God, but he was no longer able to work. I know. There's a lot of reaching here. I know. We just have no idea. That sentence really got me, because I was like, why would you brutally club somebody over the head when there's supposed to be a ritual sacrifice to some gods? That just doesn't seem like the way to treat a sacrifice. But I mean, I guess I can't look at it with my modern eyes. You have to look at it with... the eyes of the people that were there, which you don't have. So you can't do, you just have to speculate, which is what we do. Lots of speculation. Lots of speculation. All right. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. I wish we could know why he died horribly the way he did. And my true crime heart is like, come on, we've got to have this story. Yeah. I figured it out, but yeah, it doesn't look like it.
00:33:37
Speaker
All right, well, is that it? I think so. I think it is. All right. Well, hey, guys, we mentioned last time on the podcast that we were thinking about starting an RVing podcast. And I realized I said, hey, message us if you want to do that. But that's actually kind of hard. Nobody's going to send an email. You're going to sit there and tap out an email to us. So, an easier way might be, look down in your show notes, we'll leave a link to our Roadster Adventures Instagram, which if you're not doing that for some reason, it's just R-O-D-S-T-E-R Adventures Roadster, which is a combination of our two last names. That's why it's not R-O-A-D Road. It's like Rodster, think of it that way. So, Roadster Adventures on Instagram, and just go follow us. I think we've got like 730 followers as of this recording. If we get to a thousand followers on Instagram, which is only like 270 of our 30,000 listeners every month, which shouldn't be that hard. 30, we have 30 to 50,000 listeners. Oh yeah, it won't be so hard at all. Sure. No, that's like a drop in the bucket. I'm sure. Like there's definitely 270 people that are going to go follow us right now. Yeah, that's all I'm saying. Just go follow us. If we get to 1,000. You're so glass half full sometimes, it's shocking. If we get to 1,000, because I'm willing to bet most of the people that listen to this show do not follow us on Instagram, because we've had that many followers for a while. Yeah, we don't do that much. We don't really promote it too much. We don't really do anything with that Instagram too much. We do post some stuff on there, but if we get to 1,000 over there, that'll be our signal that people want to hear our podcast. People want to hear us talk about RVing. Dave, I want to hear us ramble on even more about nonsensical things. At least on this podcast you learned something from us. You'll literally learn nothing over there. I promise you that. That's not true. You might be inspired to buy an RV and hit the road. Oh yeah. We'll cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A New RVing Adventure Podcast?
00:35:21
Speaker
you do it Truth. Guaranteed to lose your life savings if you listen to that show. So yeah. Anyway. With that. It's great. Do it. Bye. Bye.
00:35:41
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment in and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:36:05
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.