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"Baffling" Roman Artifact, an Unusual Burial, and Vegan Cavemen - Ep 263
3k Plays7 months ago
This week we have 3 interesting news articles! First, we look at a mysterious Roman artifact called a dodecahedron that literally has baffled archaeologists and historians. Then, we look an unusual burial in Vienna with 2 individuals in an embrace. Re-analysis with new techniques has corrected assumptions made in the past about who they were! And finally, we discuss new evidence that paleolithic humans ate a primarlily vegan diet.
Links
Segment 1
- An Unbelievable Relic From the Roman Empire Is Baffling Archaeologists (Popular Mechanics)
- Why Did Ancient Romans Make this Baffling Metal Dodecahedron? (Scientific American)
Segment 2
Segment 3
- Scientists find that cavemen ate a mostly vegan diet in groundbreaking new study (Joe)
- Isotopic evidence of high reliance on plant food among Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers at Taforalt, Morocco (Nature Ecology & Evolution)
Contact
- Chris Webster chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
- Rachel Roden rachel@unraveleddesigns.com RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Introduction to Archaeological Headlines
00:00:04
Speaker
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.
Roman Artifacts and the Vegan Caveman Debate
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 263.
00:00:20
Speaker
On today's show, we talk about a baffling Roman artifact, an unusual burial in Vienna, and vegan cavemen. Let's dig a little deeper, stop when you get to the horse. Welcome to the show every person. Including me? Yeah. Well, thanks. I guess. Welcome to you as well.
Impact of Long Drives on Recording
00:00:50
Speaker
did.
00:00:50
Speaker
If you are listening to this in like actual real time, we're a little bit late today, but that's okay. We have a long drive and you're going to, we have, we have six weeks of long drives coming up. So it may happen again. I know we're going to try so hard to use this week to get ahead on recording. We already have one like plan in place to make that happen, but you know, if there's like a topic out there that you've wanted us to cover maybe, and it would be something that we could add into our get ahead on our recording list. That would be cool. Let us know.
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if you could also do all the research, send us a whole bunch of notes. No, that's not what I mean. No, I'm just kidding. Because we're following these news articles as they come out, right? Which means we're always a little close on recording and releasing. By design. Yeah, we're trying to follow current news. But if we do something with a little bit more research behind it, then we can get those done ahead of time.
The Mystery of the Roman Dodecahedron
00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:44
Speaker
Anyway, it's nice when we can find something that baffles us. We do always like those. I'm surprised the other two weren't baffling as well, but one was remarkable and the other one was groundbreaking.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I guess you just have to get used to and accept those words in journalism. That's what they do. That's how they draw us in. I guess we do get drawn in every time we see that because we're like, huh, what are we baffled about now? I was drawn on this one by the shape of the the actual artifact. But yeah, we'll get to that one in a second. This one is titled An Unbelievable Relic from the Roman Empire is Baffling Archaeologists. And actually, you can click on our link in the show notes or just look at any news source, because I saw probably 10 different articles about this.
00:02:30
Speaker
It's it's all over the place. Don't we have to kind of admit that like archaeologists are a little bit baffled. They actually are baffled Yeah, nobody knows what this is for literally have no idea what they use it for except for it's probably Let's just punchline. Oh Yeah It definitely could be so
00:02:51
Speaker
Anyway, it's a cool thing. It's a dodecahedron. It basically looks like a soccer ball. It does, yeah. It's a dodecahedron, which is a 12-sided object if you speak Spanish. It's kind of like the word. Isn't doce 12 in Spanish? Yeah, it's kind of a root, sort of a Latin root. I suspect it's got Latin roots there, yeah. Well, dodeca is Latin. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's a metal alloy that it's made out of. It looks really cool. It's got little
00:03:17
Speaker
little balls on the outside of it, on the apexes of the corners, on every single corner. And then it's got holes on the sides on every facet. Interestingly, the holes do not appear to all be the same size, which again adds to the bafflement because it's like, why aren't they equally sized? Who knows? So yeah.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, and they call them knobs on the corner. I just realized that. Yeah, that's what it said in the description. But again, they're too small for grabbing like you would an actual doorknob or something like that. So they're not that kind of knob. They're just these little round bubbles. There's little round bubbles in the corners of each of the dodecahedron sides.
00:04:00
Speaker
I don't know if I saw this in any of the articles I read, but they did say it would take a skilled craftsman to make, but this being a metal alloy, I guess it would have been cast?
Craftsmanship and Distribution of Dodecahedrons
00:04:08
Speaker
I don't know. You'd make a report. I don't know how this would have been made, but it would have been a hell of a mold or something to pour this into. Yeah, I actually did do a little research beyond just this article because I was intrigued.
00:04:22
Speaker
I've read like two or three. I didn't see it in any of them. Yeah, I didn't see it in any of them. And then I kind of did like, you know, Wikipedia look a little quick glance through and a couple other places on the internet. And I didn't see anything about how they created it. Just that it had to be an expert craftsman because they were hard to make. And also in addition to that, the materials would have been very expensive. A metal alloy like this would have been super pricey. So you've got expert craftsman and very expensive materials equaling something very important to somebody for some reason.
00:04:52
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, and the crazy thing is, again, we have no, there's no mention of these anywhere on anything. Nobody knows what they were for. They're not used contemporaneously with anything. There's no written record of them being used. There's no oral records. But like 130 of them have been found across Europe, including 33 in Britain. So it's not like they were uncommon. No, they definitely were all over. Like people knew about them. Somebody was like, hey, I need another one of these. Can you make me one? Yeah, sure, no problem. It's going to be $1,000.
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, like we don't even know the word for them. We call it a dodecahedron because it's got false eyes, but we don't know what they called them. So yeah, it's crazy. I guess it's possible it is referenced in a text somewhere, but we just don't know that that is what they're referring to because we don't have a visual to go along with it or context that tells us that that's what they're referring to. So maybe someday that puzzle can get put together by somebody if they find the right, you know, resources to do that. So, yeah. Interestingly, while these have been found in association with the Roman Empire,
00:05:50
Speaker
All of these have been found, most in any way, have been found in northern Europe and Britain, but none have been found in Italy. Yeah, it's definitely a northern thing, so potentially influenced by the peoples that lived in that area when Rome took them over, because it doesn't seem like it originated with the Romans in Rome, right?
00:06:10
Speaker
Do you think the Romans gave it to tribes that they took over or people that took over and said, like, this is magical. It will make you a Roman. Put this in your church. Yeah, definitely. I'm sure that's what happened. That's why there's none in Rome.
00:06:26
Speaker
Okay. So how do they find this most recent, really fantastic example? In the summer of 2023, the Norton Disney archeology group and DAG for short uncovered the 33rd, this one being the 33rd dodecahedron that has ever been found in Britain. It's called Norton Disney because it's the name of the city, not a theme park, which is what Americans probably think of the word Disney as, but yeah.
00:06:51
Speaker
If somebody there wanted to put together a theme park, could they call it Disneyland? There are Disney around the world. Is that some sort of copyright infringement? Other people can have that name.
00:07:08
Speaker
All right, you need to refocus here. No, I'm sorry. All right. So this is about 1,700 years old, relatively dated by other artifacts around it, because you can't date.
Dating the Dodecahedron: Methods and Theories
00:07:17
Speaker
Well, OK. So it's metal. I actually don't know of any metal metallic dating methods. I don't know. There are some dating methods that Paul and I have talked about on Archaeotech Podcast that have to do with metallurgical dating methods and different things. I'm struggling to think about it right now. But these guys clearly didn't use any of those. But it was more of a
00:07:37
Speaker
It was more of a metallic deposit in something else, naturally occurring, I think, that we were talking about. Well, they did do x-ray fluorescence XRF, but that was just to find out the copper alloy composition, which was 75% copper, 7% tin, and 18% lead.
00:07:58
Speaker
But they're a little strapped on time and stuff because they actually found this. I don't know why this always freaking happens. They found it on the second to last day of excavation last year. So they just, they plan to return this year and just fully excavate the entire area and get better context for
00:08:15
Speaker
where it was found what was going on there and then I'm sure they won't be able to tell exactly what it was used for unless they also find a scroll that tells them but at least they'll have better context around it and I think they'll be able to narrow in on that date a little bit better too. The 1700 years I think just comes from the fact that the site that they were recording dates to about that time so assuming that they are related then you can extend that date to this artifact as well.
00:08:40
Speaker
It's also assuming they can tell that somebody didn't dig a hole down through the excavation site and drop this there. Because, I mean, Britain, people have been digging and building and doing things there for 2,000 years. So who's to say something is not in place? Yeah. You can tell by the soil, though, usually. That's what I'm saying. They would know.
00:09:00
Speaker
As we mentioned, these aren't mentioned or described in any Roman literature or any other literature that we have. They aren't of a standard size, making them not some sort of measuring device. They're all different, basically. They're dodecahedrons. They look the same.
00:09:16
Speaker
And they have the little knobby things on them, I think. But other than that, they're different sizes. And this one in particular is special because it's probably the largest example that's been found. But they range in size from golf ball to baseball. So there's just a lot of them.
00:09:32
Speaker
You know, they also, the ones have found they don't shine any signs of wear. So they're not being used as some sort of tool or something like that. So they're being made and being used as some sort of decorative or like they said, possibly some sort of ritualistic object, which would be handled with care and precision. And you know, but then again, why is it just like dumped in a pit somewhere? The lack of wear is really weird to me because we've got a couple of potential possibilities that we're going to list here in a minute.
00:10:02
Speaker
But honestly they would show where if they were used for any of these options so like truly Who knows who knows what this was used
Theories on Dodecahedron Usage
00:10:11
Speaker
for? They typically date from between the first and fifth century CE
00:10:16
Speaker
And like I was just saying, we can try to guess at the function, but that's really the best we can do. And, you know, for example, there have been many found in a temple context and the materials are super high quality that this whole nowhere thing. So maybe some kind of, you know, religious purpose. We could say the R word again, if you want ritual, maybe.
00:10:39
Speaker
This one was really interesting to me this possibility is they have also been found in coin hoards Which indicates a couple things one that it was valuable enough to be stashed with your coins. Yeah
00:10:51
Speaker
And two, the other option is that maybe it was connected with the coins, like those holes in it, maybe those were used to check the size of a coin. But the thing is, is that if you're passing a coin through a hole like that over and over again to check that the coin is the right size, you're gonna get wear on the edges. Like that is going to happen over time, right? Yeah, maybe. And also, how do you get the coin out once you check it? I don't know, it just... Yeah.
00:11:18
Speaker
Unless you don't push it all the way through, I don't know. I have problems with that theory, but I also kind of like it. But why different sizes, though? Well, for different size coins, maybe? Well, the different size holes around one, but why different size dodecahedrons to begin with? They would all be made the same size. Now you're talking about a measuring standard.
00:11:37
Speaker
which they've already said that can't be one. Yeah, they're all different. Now the holes themselves, that would be interesting to know is, is there a standard size for the holes themselves all around the dodecahedron? Maybe the overall object is different, but if the holes are standard, then that could indicate maybe some sort of measuring tool. Yeah.
00:11:58
Speaker
So here's some other crazy possibilities. It could be a spool knitting device for making gloves. Okay, now look, I'm a knitter. And I know what they're talking about. There are these things that you can buy where you basically can knit a tube using this handheld thing with little knobbies on top of it and you just loop the yarn around. I'm not describing it very well. It's really hard to say it in words. If you've done it, you know what I'm talking about.
00:12:27
Speaker
I guess it's possible, but there's no reason for it to have 12 sides. You only need one side. And yes, you need a hole in the middle of it because as you create it, the thing that you're knitting goes down through the hole, right? But that just does not, I don't know. I don't buy it. It doesn't seem likely. Also, there's no evidence for knitted fabric that long ago either. Different size holes for different size hands.
00:12:51
Speaker
Maybe, or socks. You could also do socks the same way. I'm not putting my foot in that. You don't put your foot in it. You create the thing and then you put your foot into that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't buy it. Another one is a child's toy, but I don't buy that either because it's too expensive and too ornate and too hard to build. I don't know. Our nephew has one that looks exactly like that. Your nephew's bougie. It's not made of metal either. It's plastic, but still.
00:13:16
Speaker
This would be like if your nephew had one made out of gold. Yeah, it's true. Decorative purposes that I would possibly believe if it were something fancy. To test the skill of the metalsmith, perhaps for guild status, that I would almost believe if there were a lot more of them. And also if there were ones that were poorly made. That were crappy, right? Somebody's practicing for their guild test. It's going to make like a hundred of them before they get real good at it, right?
00:13:41
Speaker
Didn't pass. But it's metal. You just melt it right back down, don't you? Why would you keep this to begin with? Unless it's like, oh, I passed. This is my trophy. Maybe. That is a possibility. And that would mean why there's fewer of them. Maybe. Or? Fortune telling. I don't even know. That was just the last thing listed, and I'm sure. Why not?
Roman Burials in Austria
00:14:05
Speaker
All right.
00:14:07
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So crazy, crazy artifacts that we, these Romans, they always had crazy things that we just don't know exactly what they used them for. So who could even say, but yeah, it makes me want to time machine. Well, maybe we can use it to find out why two women and a horse were buried together in Austria. We'll find out that on the other side of the break.
00:14:30
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, episode two, six, three. There's gotta be some math there. Oh yeah, two divided by six is three. That means six divided by two is three, it's early. That's why we don't record this morning. Did you also know that six divided by three is two? Oh yeah. Yeah. Six divided by two is three. And three times two. Three times two is six. This is a crazy episode, ritual.
00:14:57
Speaker
Welcome to Meaningless Math by Chris and Rachel. We're actually Basic Math by Chris and Rachel. Also, all these numbers add up to 11.
00:15:07
Speaker
meaningless, AKA ritual. Okay, well, we're going to drink some more coffee and talk about this article. Indeed. This is called Two Ancient Women Buried Together in Austria in First of Its Kind to Find Remarkable. Now, here's what I don't like about headlines. I just assumed these were two women lovers and that's what they were going for.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, no. Well, they were. They were. They were trying to draw you in with that. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And I'm upset by that because that would be remarkable. That would be like, oh my God, that's really cool. We have evidence of some sort of lesbian relationship in Austria back this amount of time. And they were buried in a lover's embrace back in this time. That's great.
00:15:56
Speaker
But no, it's boring and stupid. I hate it. Okay, calm down. It is not boring or stupid. It is compared to what I thought it was, which would have been remarkable. This is not remarkable. This is just crazy Austrians. So let's get into it. Okay. Yeah. It's still really interesting. That's interesting. All right.
00:16:11
Speaker
All right, so the background here is in 2004 human remains were encountered during a construction project in Austria. And of course that initiated a whole excavation and in the end they ended up finding 220 burials. And bankruptcy when they couldn't finish the construction. Yeah, probably.
00:16:29
Speaker
I mean, it's kind of shocking they didn't know this was there because it turns out that it is the primary necropolis for the Roman city of Ovalava. And what Romans did is that their necropolises were located just outside the city along the road, road into the entrance. So that was, I think, a pretty common layout, right?
00:16:52
Speaker
I feel like they probably should have had an idea that they were going to come across something like this. I know, Sarah, much. Yeah, right. And then the burials themselves were a mix of full skeletal remains and also cremated remains. So probably an area in transition between Roman pagan stuff, Christianity, all that kind of thing going on in this area.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah. They had a few burials that also dated from the sixth to the eighth centuries of the early middle ages. Yeah. So they sort of had a broad range going on. One of the graves, one that they numbered a grave 12 was a little different from the others and it contained two sets of remains, one in the embrace of the other and below them was the complete remains of a horse. Yeah. Crazy, right? Crazy.
00:17:34
Speaker
and unusual too for the Romans. So because they had this unusual horse burial thing going on and they had one skeleton in the embrace of another skeleton, they kind of went with sort of the obvious story like you were saying in the beginning.
00:17:50
Speaker
that maybe this was the grave of two lovers a man and a woman and Since there's a horse that might be from the medieval time period and they had other beer burials from that time period too So because I guess apparently in medieval times burying your horse with you would be something people of higher stature would do so yeah, so that was the original assumption I guess and That remained until 2019 when the remains were reanalyzed by osteologists at the University of Vienna
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah, they found that rather than it being a man and a woman it was actually two women and then they used genetic analysis because there was enough I mean the bones were intact enough that they could do that they used genetic analysis to discover the remains belong to two women one between 40 and 60 years old and the other between 20 and 25 years old and that they were directly related to each other and then that
00:18:41
Speaker
Since they were directly related to each other, given the age difference, the assumption was that they were mother and daughter. Yeah. That doesn't mean they were mother and daughter. Yeah, not for sure. I think they're within like one degree relatives, right? So like they had to have been mother, daughter, maybe sisters, but given the age difference, that would be difficult probably. So yeah, that's really cool. I mean, I know it's not as exciting as finding the first lesbians buried together, but
00:19:07
Speaker
But I love that it just shows that ancient peoples were just as family focused as people are today. And it wasn't some free for all in Rome, or Vienna in this case,
Revisiting the Caveman Diet
00:19:21
Speaker
that it was family first, right? And they don't know why they were buried together.
00:19:26
Speaker
They have some guesses, though. Yeah, we'll get to that in a bit. They used radiocarbon dating to determine that the women were from the same Roman age as the rest of the site, which should be obvious. Not medieval, which makes the horse burial still different and weird.
00:19:44
Speaker
They were buried with some grave goods, which included some pendants and jewelry that dated to the Roman era, which helped further confirm the date, so some more relative dating. It's nice when you have a whole bunch of different dating methods you can use that all overlap. I always like to imagine dating methods, because people actually do this. When you date a site, we do this all the time with a historic trash dump, but a historic trash site in the West.
00:20:07
Speaker
you'll take a range. You'll say, well, this bottle manufacturer dates here from this start date to this end date. And then this one's this start date to this end date. And you just got all these overlapping dates. And wherever they meet in the middle, somewhere in there is probably when this dates to. Yep, exactly. Yeah, it's pretty cool when you see all that.
00:20:28
Speaker
Now, the positioning of the body suggests they were buried at the same time, so that gives us one clue as to why they're in this grave together. Would it have been hard to wrap a skeleton around a person? I mean, I guess if one of them died before the other and they didn't bury right away, yeah, maybe, I don't know, but that would be weird and not typical for the people of this time period.
00:20:52
Speaker
And there is no evidence in the bones that there was some kind of accident, violence, something visible to the eye, or even to the microscope, because they did a pretty good analysis on these bones, to show what they died from. So their best guess is that there was some kind of infectious disease that wouldn't leave a mark on the skeleton, because they happened so quickly. There's not time to leave a mark on the skeleton, and that is likely why they died and were buried together.
00:21:21
Speaker
And the horse could have been the older woman's, because it says that her bones suggest that she was a frequent horse rider. It means she was bull legged, basically. Yeah, I think so. She might have shown arthritis in various areas that would happen from riding. Yeah, they didn't go into it, exactly. But yeah, you're probably right.
00:21:42
Speaker
So back to those two pieces of jewelry found in the grave They were both made of gold which indicates that these were women of high social status and one of them is a Wheel-shaped pendant and the other is a crescent moon shaped pendant known as a lunula So that is I thought that was interesting and the wheel shaped pendant is really cool There's a picture of it in the article
00:22:06
Speaker
So take a look at it. Also in the article, I love this, they put up a drawing in of the two skeletons in different colors so that you can really see how the first individual sort of has her arm around the second one. It's just like,
00:22:23
Speaker
When you're just looking at a jumble of bones that you've uncovered, it's really hard to see this kind of stuff, but when they put it into color like they did in this image, that really brought it home for me because I was like, how do they really know that one was in the embrace of the other? But yeah, that drawing really shows how that worked. It's really cool. Also don't see a crescent moon-shaped pennant in the pennant.
00:22:51
Speaker
No, I don't think they just looks like a circle. No, I don't think they included that one in the picture Well, there's oh, yeah, there's two two pieces of jewelry one is the wheel. Yeah, and the other one is a circle Yeah, I don't see in crescent moon. I didn't see the crescent moon either, but they listed it in the article so
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, they did. But yeah, those definitely look like the grave goods of high status people. And given the fact that a horse was apparently, you know, slaughtered and buried with them because I can't imagine the horse also died naturally, although maybe I guess just shows that they were probably pretty high status people.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we know that the horse was probably killed just to be buried with him and not for food. And we know that because they were probably vegans. We'll find out why in the next article. It's all wrong. Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, episode 263. I kind of mumble-mouthed that one. 263. Well, we find out that caveman hipsters were vegans.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I'm so excited about this article because it's just my favorite kind of article. There's a lot of shocking things in this article, actually. Yeah. Not as shocking as you'd think, though. I mean, you shouldn't think about it. No, I mean, it's shocking the way that they say it if you were to just read this, but not shocking from how the world works kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, the title is scientists find that cavemen ate mostly vegan diet in a groundbreaking new study. And I said right before we hit record that I wasn't going to mention this, but I'm going to
00:24:27
Speaker
anyway. It's from some news outlet called Joe, and we find most of our stuff on Apple News because it's a very good aggregate of lots of different things. I don't have any idea what Joe is, but they linked to the real article. They did link to the real article. The actual nature article, right? Yes, and we went and verified. Nature, ecology, and evolution.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And I went and looked at it and read the abstract and the first bit of the article. And it's actually, uh, it's one that I would recommend taking a look at because it was written in a way that I could follow. And yeah. So Joe didn't do too bad. Very good. Yeah. I'm not sure where that came from. Yeah. Just stereotypical caveman image. I think that is Joe.
00:25:11
Speaker
Aren't we all Joe really? Wow. Wow. Okay.
00:25:16
Speaker
Anyway, up until now, well, this is writing straight from the article, but I don't know if I would necessarily agree with this, but what they say is, up until now, the picture of cavemen has always included hunting animals and roasting them over a fire. I think archeologists would generally disagree with that. Wouldn't probably start disagreeing with that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, even we know that there was a heavy influence of plants and nuts and seeds and things. But the idea behind it is true, because the public perception of a caveman,
00:25:46
Speaker
Oh, well, we know about the public, though. Well, we're trying to educate the public. So that is the perception, and it's not necessarily true. And this article is really helping show that it's not true at all. Listen, Joe Public. Joe Public. That's not how it goes. Welcome to science.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yes. In fact, it is so public that this is what's inspired the paleo diet. Have you ever heard of the paleo diet? It's because they're like, well, if it was good enough for paleo people, it's like, did you know they lived to 25 and died horribly with like bad teeth? Oh, by the way, they were also vegan. So all that lean meat from like deer and stuff that you thought was okay to eat.
00:26:38
Speaker
Anyway, the traditional argument has been that ancient humans used simple stone tools and they were not advanced enough to grow and cultivate plants. Instead, they hunted, fished, gathered wild plants for food, but mostly had a diet of lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, things that were easy to gather.
00:26:54
Speaker
And centered around protein intake. Yeah, like the idea was that the protein that they were finding, the fish, the game, whatever it was, was the main source. And then they just supplemented with nuts and seeds and fruits and things.
00:27:08
Speaker
enter new study to bust apart this picture of hunter-gatherers. It was published by the Nature Ecology and Evolution Journal. In this paper, they present substantial evidence to suggest that their diets were mostly plant-based.
00:27:25
Speaker
Yeah, they did. The study focused on an area of Morocco called Teferalt and the Paleolithic people that occupied it around 15,000 years ago. And using stable isotope analysis, researchers looked at nitrogen and zinc isotope levels in teeth, enamel, and collagen. Now, stable isotope analysis is always used around the world to look at somebody's teeth
00:27:51
Speaker
and really kind of figure out almost where they came from because you can look at the isotopes within the teeth and then you can really tell, it's a signature of the region where you could have come from. In fact, one of the most famous ones they did that on was Otzi the Iceman. Oh yeah, totally. And they could tell which kind of region he came from because he wasn't necessarily from where he was found in that little iceberg.
00:28:14
Speaker
And I forgot to add this into our notes, but when I went and looked at the actual article from Nature, they looked at more than just those isotopes. It was zinc and strontium analysis on dental enamel, bulk carbon and nitrogen and sulfur isotope analysis on dentin and bone collagen. So they're looking at slightly different things depending on which part of the tooth that they are, you know, sampling. I was gonna have some bulk carbon for breakfast.
00:28:42
Speaker
I don't necessarily know what all of those mean or say about it, but they can draw conclusions based on the levels of those isotopes or presence or not presence too, probably if they're there or not on what their diet was like.
00:28:57
Speaker
What all this means is that they had a wide range of plant-based food, these people did, such as acorns, pine nuts, wild pulses, which made up a significant part of the diet of these cave dwellers. And they didn't really dwell in caves so much. But there were actually a lot of caves in that area. And they would have used them for shelter and things like that. But the point is, they did probably eat meat when it was available and convenient. But it wouldn't have been a primary source of food for them.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, their teeth don't show that they were eating that on a daily basis. Now, if they were eating it more frequently, maybe they just cooked it really well and they just knew really how to cook a nice, tender cut of meat. Nice and soft. You'd still see it in the teeth. Oh, yeah. That's probably true. Yeah.
00:29:43
Speaker
Anyway, I think this is pretty logical, actually, because we have been reading more and more articles that are all pointing to this conclusion. And one of those is that, A, women were much more involved in the entire process of food sustainability for the people. Men were much more involved in the gathering portion than people think. Women were much more involved in the hunting portion when it did happen. So it's a whole team effort.
00:30:11
Speaker
And it makes more sense that the gathering portion of the foods before cultivation and things like that was taking place and even after, it makes more sense that it would be an all hands effort only because it's so intensive, right? Like you, sure you take down a mammoth, everybody's eaten for days, but, or even a bison, right? Or, you know, name your animal and wherever you're at.
00:30:32
Speaker
But it's only for so long until it spoils too, because I don't think they had preservation techniques. You could have like jerky eyes some of it when she got to that point. But then again, that takes a lot of processing and 15,000 years ago, I don't know if they were doing that and you had to pretty much just gorge yourself on it. I remember, I reference this book all the time and if you haven't read it,
00:30:52
Speaker
pick it up, it's worth the read, but it's called Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes. And it's by a guy who's Everett. I want to say his last name is Everett. I can't remember though, but it's called Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes. But it's about a guy who was a missionary who went to live with this tribe down in South America. I mean, classic tale of the missionary. His job was to learn their language, translate the Bible into their language so that he could teach them Christianity. Oh, he was trying to. But he ended up basically becoming an atheist and just living with the tribe and then learning all the things about them.
00:31:21
Speaker
But it was really cool because one of the things that they did, they just like lived in the moment and they didn't really have day, night schedules. The temperature was the same all year long and they didn't really have a lot of bad storms or anything. It was just just a kind of an idyllic life. But when somebody brought home a food, it doesn't matter what time it was. If it was a big animal and they brought it home, it was gorge yourself till it was gone time. And it didn't matter if it was 2 a.m. or whatever. And everybody basically just slept on that food until it was done. And I have to imagine that was real life.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you got to get it while it's there, right? Because it's going to go away, especially in a place like that, in a place like we're talking about in Morocco here. It's not cold there. I mean, in the night it probably is, in the desert. You might not be able to stuff in the cave and make it last a little while longer, but it's not going to last that long. Yeah, for sure. So you're right. It's just not going to last.
Origins and Development of Agriculture
00:32:09
Speaker
So I think around the world,
00:32:11
Speaker
in different places, gathering vegetables and things and nuts and stuff would have been. It just makes sense that the times, the in between times, the times when you didn't have access to the big game, the big kill, whatever, in the winter even when game is scarcer, you had to know how to find this kind of stuff that was growing naturally. And then the other thing this article says, which I thought was super interesting is that
00:32:38
Speaker
Well, first of all, they found an abundance of cavities in the teeth of these these people. And that suggests the consumption of fermentable starchy plants like beets, corn, rye and cassava. So they were finding basically foods with a higher sugar content that was giving them cavities. So they probably enjoyed those foods more than some of the other stuff they were eating. Quite a bit. Yeah. Makes sense. But the other thing that they said that I thought was really interesting from this article and I think they need to do a lot more research to really like
00:33:08
Speaker
figure out how true this is, but they're saying that this population developed ways to cultivate plant growth and to harvest crops thousands of years before the agricultural revolution took place. And I'm like, well, how are you drawing that conclusion? But I guess if you start thinking about it, like maybe they were
00:33:31
Speaker
Maybe they were using the natural landscape and just enhancing it, right? Like they knew a certain plant grew in this one valley and if they pulled these other plants out around it, then that one plant that they wanted would grow better. And like that's kind of the beginnings of farming essentially, right? Is allowing something that they want to grow without being constricted by other plants.
00:33:55
Speaker
Or they might have even gone as far as realizing that if they ate something and the seeds were left over and they chucked them next to it, that there'd be a plant there next year. So I guess the beginnings of agriculture could have come from this gathering that they were doing, essentially. Kind of makes sense. It's sort of that natural progression.
00:34:18
Speaker
They also suggest in the Nature article, too, they said that there's a notable absence of archaeological evidence towards agricultural development in Northern Africa. And it's probably because of the preservation of
00:34:34
Speaker
archaeology in Northern Africa. But this is starting to raise some questions about that. And I think one of the ways that it does that is if they were in this relatively hostile environment, now 15,000 years ago it was less so because it was more Savannah-like, if I'm not mistaken. I know that was true in, say, the Eastern Rift Valley.
00:34:56
Speaker
like East Africa and stuff like that. I'm not so sure about Morocco, but I think largely Africa 15,000 years ago was less desert-like than it is now in some places. But again, don't quote me on that from Morocco. But even so...
00:35:09
Speaker
I mean, if they were eating many, many more plants and things like that, then we actually assumed, well, they had to have access to that kind of stuff. And you're right. If they were just giving them the plants and things more favorable conditions to grow in and possibly saying, Hey, let's move this one over here and this one over here and, you know, understanding what that means. Yeah.
00:35:28
Speaker
That is really agriculture. Agriculture is generally known to have sprung up, so to speak, 10,000 plus years ago in the Fertile Crescent, Iran, Iraq area, and then basically sprung forth massive strides in human evolution from a cultural standpoint.
00:35:47
Speaker
But in reality, it's sprung up all around the world. Agriculture is something that's happened in lots of different places, and it wasn't this cultural meme that just went around the world. It didn't start there and spread out everywhere. It began in lots of different places. It just happens to be that Europe and the Middle East are two places where
00:36:08
Speaker
our civilization, massive population centers grew up there. And that's where the modern world basically started. And there's a lot of transmission of knowledge between those groups of people. Across them. Across them, yeah. So it is possible that it did start in the Fertile Crescent area and grow out towards Europe from there, just through that transmission of information. But we know that it happened in North America and South America, too. So not in the same ways, obviously, in different ways. But it definitely happened.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah, it grew up independently around the world. This is interesting for me because the idea has always been that overnight just happened. But it didn't. These were people who lived on this land and they knew how to get what they needed from it.
00:36:53
Speaker
if they realized that the plants that they wanted to eat were growing out of their trash pile because the seeds were taking root and growing there, then they might have investigated that and then done it more intentionally later on. It only makes sense. And that is like the true beginnings of agriculture on an individual or community level. And it's almost more interesting to me to watch a human like develop that kind of thing. I love that this research supports that idea. It's really neat.
00:37:23
Speaker
I guess with that, we'll call it. Hopefully, we can get some news in during our 1,400-mile drive this weekend and have an episode for you. But if we don't, don't be shocked. Well, the good news is that I'll have internet most of that time, so I can be on the lookout for interesting news stories. Exactly. And if anybody ever comes across something they find interesting, definitely send it over to us on our contact info in the show notes to look down at your device.
00:37:48
Speaker
and send us an email with an article in it. We always appreciate that. Yeah, for sure. Because if it's interesting to you, then we want to talk about it. That's the whole point of this show. Yeah, for sure. All right, with that, we will see you later. Bye.
00:38:05
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment 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.
00:38:29
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his 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.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.