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Not More Mummies! - Episode 3
60 Plays11 years ago
Welcome to Episode 3 of The Struggling Archaeologist’s Guide to Getting Dirty: Not More Mummies!
In this episode we get transported back to 15th century England to explore the exciting (and terrifying) world of the Plantagenets and the Tudors, kind of like the Montagues and Capulets without the teen love gone wrong. It’s a brutal world where if you’re not too careful you could end up looking like this….
Seriously, this is the newly discovered and identified skull of King Richard III, the infamous “Hunchback of York.” I’m proud to say that my kinda sorta alma mater, the University of Leicester, led excavations that uncovered the Medieval Greyfriars friary along with the internment of the King earlier this year. I am taking total credit, of course, because they really couldn’t have done it without me… joking aside, I’m really excited for all of the Richard talk that has been going on and so I couldn’t resist boring you with a short history of the Medieval monarchy and an analysis of Richard’s remains. And yes, I did resist the urge to sing something from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, thank you. If you were paying attention then you might have heard me mention something about a ginormous hole in his head and a really bad case of the “scolies” (that’s hood talk for scoliosis), and I promised pictures- so here you go!
Photos Courtesy of the University of Leicester
Anyway, enjoy the episode folks, and leave your comments below or email them to [email protected]!
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
The
Introduction and Episode Theme
00:00:19
Speaker
Hey folks, and welcome to another episode of the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Getting Dirty. This is Jenny, and I am here to guide you through episode 3, which is entitled, Not More Mummies. You'll find out why in a little bit. Spoiler, she's gonna talk about mummies again.
00:00:25
Speaker
End
00:00:39
Speaker
Anyway, I think we should get right down to it. I've got a lot of stuff to cover today and I do not want to keep you guys here for another 40 minutes because that was a long time. So let's get down to business.
Jenny's Background and Richard III Discovery
00:00:51
Speaker
So I know that I promised you guys a scoop about Richard III on the last episode and here's where we are on that. So actually this requires a bit of background knowledge. Let's see, I, me, myself,
00:01:08
Speaker
I do have a degree from the University of Leicester, England, which is the school that made the discovery of Richard III's remains. So, let me say, I didn't actually go to school in England, although I have been there, it is a lovely country.
00:01:25
Speaker
But the University of Leicester has an amazing distance program in archaeology and ancient history, one that I partook in when I was, let's say, stuck in the middle of Mississippi in a very small town that did not have any type of archaeology or anthropology program nearby. And so I was kind of, you know,
00:01:46
Speaker
wanting to go back to school and I didn't have a lot of options, so the distance program I discovered was actually one of the best ones in the world. University of Leicester is a very accredited school. It's got lots of great stuff going on in archaeology, so I thought, what the heck? I'm gonna do it! So I did, and it was a really great experience. I enjoyed it. If anyone there is thinking about doing a distance program,
00:02:13
Speaker
Maybe you don't have a school near you, don't have the means, I think the distance program at Lester is a good option. It actually was sufficient after I got my degree to get me accepted at a fine American institution for my master's degree, of which I am almost done. Thank you! So yeah, it worked for me, maybe it could work for you, who knows.
00:02:37
Speaker
So anyway, what does this have to do with anything? The University of Leicester, who made the discovery, is my alma mater, I guess you could say, and I'm still in contact with some of my old professors there, so I reached out to them. I got in touch with Dr. Ruth Young, who was one of my teachers. She's a lovely lady. I met her last year at SAA representing Leicester, and we had a lovely conversation. So she was nice enough to write me back,
00:03:04
Speaker
And I just wanted to know how things were going there now that they've got all of this buzz surrounding the discovery and a lot of exciting things happening. So Dr. Young said that Richard III obviously has been an amazing achievement and the whole city as well as the university is very pleased.
00:03:22
Speaker
and I thank her for writing back, it's very nice of her. She also told me that she had gotten in touch with some of her colleagues who had actually worked on the Richard III project, on the discovery of the Greyfriars Church, Richard III's body, and the study of his skeleton, and I didn't ask her to do that, but she was nice enough to give them a message from me, and I'm waiting for them to get back, and maybe we'll have a little bit of a chat sometime.
00:03:50
Speaker
I obviously understand they are totally busy and important people so I am not in any rush and whenever I get that I will definitely get back to you guys with a follow up.
00:04:03
Speaker
possibly with some of the original project staff on the Richard III discovery. But anyway, that's what I had going on with my Richard III scoop-a-roo. So now that you know that, I think it's time to get on to the story. Let's talk a little bit about Richard III.
Richard III's Skeleton Discovery and Analysis
00:04:23
Speaker
The man, the myth, the legend, Richard III, his skeleton was discovered in Leicester, England, and it's obviously one of the biggest stories of the year, so duh, I'm talking about it.
00:04:37
Speaker
The identification of the skeleton has basically been confirmed through radiocarbon dating, DNA testing, and skeletal and historical analysis. Excavations of a site found under a parking lot. Of course, another parking lot. Everything is always found under parking lots, people. We should just tear them up because you know there's some good stuff down there.
00:05:01
Speaker
Alright, so anyway, under the parking lot, parking lot in Luster England was revealed the remains of the former Greyfriars friary and inside that friary was a small Greyf holding the body of the former King of England and Shakespearean villain.
00:05:19
Speaker
So let's talk about the man, himself. I've got a bunch of historical crap kind of mixed in here with the archaeology stuff, so just bear with me, you know, maybe you want to get your notebooks out, take some notes, alright? I did a lot of research for this project, I don't want it to go to waste. So here we go, Richard III.
00:05:39
Speaker
Let's see, how did he end up in a church under a parking lot in Leicester, England? Historically, we have always believed the king's death happened at the Battle of Bosworth Field on the 22nd of August in the year 1485, which was actually only two years after taking the crown. But it does make him the last English king to die in battle.
00:06:03
Speaker
Historical accounts state that he was killed brutally, publicly displayed, and then buried by the Franciscans of Leicester in their friary. Which is one of my new favorite words. Friary. Friary. Makes me think of fried food. So, let's see, friary. The same said friary.
00:06:23
Speaker
was supposedly destroyed later by King Henry VIII, I-M-I-M, and at that point, apparently, knowledge of Richard's burial place was lost. In 2012, of course, the University of Leicester, which boasts one of the best archaeology programs in the country, and they were actually in a collaborative project with the Richard III Society, who've been fighting the good fight to clear Richard's name,
00:06:50
Speaker
So they joined teams with the University of Leicester and the Leicester City Council to launch an aggressive archaeological project aimed at discovering the friary and the remains of the man himself, which of course were waiting to be discovered somewhere in their own backyard.
00:07:08
Speaker
It's only six months later when they announced that they had, indeed, discovered the king's body under one of their own city council parking lots. Or if you're British... Cawpawg. Oh, that was a terrible British accent. I think I actually sounded more like Scarlett O'Hara. Sorry! Anyway, let's talk about the staff working on the project. The Leister staff included Richard Buckley, who was the project manager, Matthew Morris, the fieldwork director,
00:07:36
Speaker
And then the osteological examination was done by Joe Appleby. The DNA and genetics were done by Turi King. And then professors Lynn Fox Hall and Kevin Shurer collaborated with history and genealogical expertise. So first and foremost, they have a skeleton. And apparently this skeleton is pretty darn beat up.
00:07:57
Speaker
Now due to the historical evidence surrounding Richard III's death and burial, the signs at this point began to indicate that the skeleton might actually be Richard. But more testing obviously had to be done to verify this theory. They began with an osteological examination done by bioarchaeologist Joe Appleby.
00:08:15
Speaker
She identified several variables which coincide with the historical reports of Richard III's death and physical characteristics. His violent end during battle is consistent with the many signs of trauma found over the body and especially the skull. Several blows and a puncture wound to his skull were identified, including a massive hole to the posterior of the foramen magnum, by some large cleaving instrument like a halberd.
00:08:41
Speaker
And seriously, this thing is huge. I'm going to put a picture on my website for you guys to see. Take a look, because it's nasty. Basically, if he had an occipital bun before the battle, he sure didn't afterwards, because it was literally just cut off.
00:08:57
Speaker
This injury alone would most likely have been, like, literally just instantly dead. But Appleby believes that just to be sure he was dead, the victors of the battle took a dagger to his face, mmm, lovely, and cut down to the bone across his cheek and jawline, which is indicated by two long cut marks on the facial palate bones.
00:09:21
Speaker
And so obviously his corpse would have been pretty disfigured after that. And I guess the thinking behind this was in case someone showed up six months later claiming to be the king and trying to take the throne, if they didn't have these type of marks then they'd obviously be an imposter. These guys were so smart.
00:09:38
Speaker
And if poor old Richie isn't having a bad enough day already, apparently there are other cut marks evident on his hip bone and rib, which indicate that either he lost his armor in battle and was injured at that point, or that these injuries were inflicted on him shortly after his death when he was stripped naked for display in the town square. Sounds like a really bad day. And I think the thinking is also, with all of the injuries on his skull, that he most likely lost his helmet in battle,
00:10:08
Speaker
And that's what gave the bad guys the opportunity to take him down and chop part of his brain out.
00:10:15
Speaker
So, let's see. That's about all we have for the injuries to the skeleton, but the other compelling evidence comes from the vertebrae, which in the middle of the spine, in this specimen, appears to have had a severe curvature, usually called scoliosis, that affected at least 11 vertebrae. And for those of you who don't know, that is a lot of vertebrae.
00:10:40
Speaker
And I guess that it's the kind of scoliosis that probably developed in adolescence, but would have had a really marked effect on the individual stance, the way they carry themselves and were able to stand up straight. And this bit of information is probably the most important because Richard III, here it comes,
00:11:01
Speaker
was famously depicted as a hunchback in both historical record and literature such as Shakespeare's play Richard III.
00:11:12
Speaker
And a lot of people, including the Richard III Society, believed that this had been actually just propaganda made up by the victor of the war, Henry Tudor, to destroy the legacy of Richard III and to justify his claim to the throne and his spot as the righteous ruler of England, because of course, why would you want some creepy hunchback guy when you can have studly Henry Tudor running England?
00:11:40
Speaker
There were a lot of 16th century writers and artists that really went out of their way to depict Richard as this evil hunchback tyrant, and a lot of people later on thought that it was simply just revenge by the Tudors and not actually historically based. But the hunchback rumor was really pervasive.
00:11:59
Speaker
106 years after his death, Sir Thomas More's depiction of him in the history of King Richard III was totally immortalized when Shakespeare used it as the basis for his depiction of Richard in Richard III. Of course, defenders of Richard say that both of those authors were loyal to the Tudor kings of their time, and so they were just being biased, you know. Don't you know? Yeah, I sound so Midwestern.
00:12:27
Speaker
Anyway, so in this case it seems that perhaps it wasn't just a bunch of bitter English authors. It might have been actually a rumor that was based in part on truth. If this is the skeleton of Richard III, then that does appear to be the case because this guy was in fact a hunchback.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah, the other stuff that comes along with Richard's persona as the evil child killer and all that may or may not be true. Not too sure about that. There is a rumor that he actually had his brother's children, who were the actual successors to the throne before him, sent to the tower and killed so that he could take control.
00:13:08
Speaker
Nobody really knows what happened to them. They disappeared, never heard from again. So it's possible Richard was a very bad boy, but whether he was or not, he actually was, in fact, a hunchback. So take that, propaganda people, with your propaganda.
00:13:26
Speaker
your Thomas Moore and Shakespeare stuff that you thought you were just being really mean about writing but was actually really true. So there Shakespeare! Deal with that!
00:13:39
Speaker
Oh, I don't really want to make it sound like I'm being mean to Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare. I mean, like, I'm a theater major, you know? I spent a long time loving Shakespeare. And my love never dies, okay? My love is pure. My love is never-ending for that man, that complete stranger, mystery man that nobody knows anything about that wrote all those really awesome plays. I love you, Shakespeare.
00:14:10
Speaker
Anyway, now that my love for Shakespeare has been outed, let's get back to business. So you ask, is the fact that some guy was buried in the same friary
00:14:22
Speaker
who happen to die violently and have really bad scoliosis, evidence enough that the skeleton is Richard. Well, it would be quite a coincidence, but it's not really foolproof evidence, no. No! Lester archaeologists thought the same thing, so they extract the samples of DNA and bone from the ribs
00:14:42
Speaker
for independent radiocarbon dating at two different facilities. So as far as the dates are concerned, each concluded with 69% confidence that the sample dated to between 1475 and 1530 AD. And Richard's death occurred in 1485, so this did kind of support their theory, I guess. Furthermore, mass spectronomy of the samples revealed a diet high in protein and seafood.
00:15:10
Speaker
which would have been consistent with the diet of an English king during the 15th century, and a 30-something year old podcaster in the years following her experimentation with vegetarianism. So anyway, along with radiocarbon dating, which if you don't know requires only organic material containing carbon-14,
00:15:33
Speaker
DNA was also extracted from one of the skeleton's teeth for analysis of its mitochondrial DNA, or MT DNA, and that's a small portion of DNA that's transferred only from mother to her children, which remains unchanged basically except for the occasional mutation or two.
DNA Confirmation and University Resources
00:15:49
Speaker
And if a line of descent through women containing the same mitochondrial DNA as Richard III existed, then their DNA could be compared with the skeleton. And if they could be shown to be identical or nearly identical, then a real identification of ancestry between these could be made.
00:16:06
Speaker
Luckily, Richard did share the mitochondrial DNA given to him by his mother, Cecily Neville, with his siblings, because the mother passes it to all of her siblings. And that DNA, that mitochondrial DNA, is passed from her daughters to their children as well. So, Cecily had a daughter, Richard's sister, Anne of York, and
00:16:30
Speaker
The line actually comes from her, it's called a matriline, and it's a line of secession from her to a living male descendant, which could be established by the comparison of his DNA to Richard III's because he shared the same MT DNA with Anne of York.
00:16:47
Speaker
So this man is a Canadian named, he's a Canadian, a Canuck A, named Michael Ibsen. And he actually shares nearly identical mitochondrial DNA to Richard III, which I'm sure came as quite a surprise to Mr. Ibsen of Canada. There's actually another individual who was also tested and also had matching matrilineal DNA from Richard's family.
00:17:10
Speaker
but they wish to remain anonymous. Apparently the news of finding out that they were related to one of the most famous and most infamous kings of England was something they didn't really want made public. Anyway, this DNA evidence that links these modern people to the family of Richard III is probably the strongest evidence proving that the body is actually him because he shares that DNA as well. And this isn't actually the only DNA evidence that exists.
00:17:39
Speaker
There was some Y chromosome testing done as well, and there isn't a lot of information provided about Luster by this, but apparently several descendants of an all-male line of descent from Henry Somerset, the Duke of Beaufort, who was a 15th generation descendant of Edward III, who was the 4th generation removed from Richard in an all-male line, was discovered. And the Y chromosome, if you don't know, is passed from males to their sons, and it's actually
00:18:09
Speaker
It's pretty easy to trace the Y chromosome through the mails of a line.
00:18:15
Speaker
This instance, even though it seems like sort of a long convoluted relationship between Edward III and Richard III and Henry Somerset and all these people, they're related by the male line and so they share their Y chromosomes almost identically. And so apparently there is some Y chromosome evidence from a descendant of these people who also shares the Y chromosome of Richard III that links him, the skeleton at least, to this family. So there you go.
00:18:45
Speaker
Let's see. Let's see. I got all of my information, in case you were wondering, about all of the excavations and the analysis from the University of Leicester's website. If you're interested, I would definitely check it out. It's le.ac.uk forward slash Richard III forward slash
00:19:04
Speaker
and so definitely check it out. They've got a lot of really good information and I'm sure they're gonna keep updating it as it comes. Okay, so I guess here's the part of the show where I go off on some crazy historical tangent because when I'm researching this stuff I get so into it and I love history so I get into the history of it all and I find out so many cool things that I feel like it's like negligible, you know,
00:19:30
Speaker
bad stuff to keep them from you, and I want you to know it too. So, for your listening pleasure, here is a quick history of Plantagenet England. So let's see, Richard III was the last of the Plantagenet kings, a line of succession which began with Geoffrey Plantagenet, or Plantagenet if you're French.
00:19:52
Speaker
who wisely married the daughter of Henry I, who was the son of William the Conqueror, who ascended the throne in 1100 AD, and who I, through some genius genealogical research, have proven to be related to. That's right. So, let's see, in a ballsy move, Henry stipulated that he should be succeeded by his daughter, Matilda.
00:20:16
Speaker
But war broke out, and in an effort to unite the English and Norman realms, he decided to marry Matilda to the son of the Count of Anjou of France, and later King of Jerusalem, Folk IV.
Plantagenet Kings and Shakespeare's Depiction
00:20:29
Speaker
He was a crusader who became a Templar, and he eventually married the daughter of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem after the death of his lovely wife, Ermengard.
00:20:40
Speaker
So, folk's son Jeffrey and Henry's daughter Matilda had a son. They named him Henry II and he actually began the Plantagenet dynasty with his marriage to Elinor of Aquitaine who brought with her the Engvin Empire. One of those really special empires, you know? And then they went on to have a bunch of sons who were kind of all a little bit cray-cray in the head.
00:21:05
Speaker
Their sons include the famous crusader king, Richard the Lionheart, Jeffrey the Wimpy, who succeeded in winding his way into the dukedom of Brittany, and King John, the funny king of England. You might also know this famous thumb-sucking villain from Robin Hood legend and Disney movie alike.
00:21:30
Speaker
And this delightful family is actually the subject of one of my favorite plays, The Lion in Winter by James Goldman. If you haven't seen this play or read it, please go do it because it is the bomb, alright? It is bad ass. I mean bad butt. So yeah, I definitely recommend renting the version with Catherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine because she kills it! Okay, peeps, she kills it.
00:21:57
Speaker
Anyway, I'm getting off the soapbox on the Lion and Winter, but it is awesome. Anyway, back to the Plantagenetes. Yeah, they're so-kay. What happened during the Plantagenet rule was the escalation of hostilities in England and over Europe. They were actually all heavily involved in the Crusades, and they were catalysts in the Baron's War, the Hundred Years' War, and the War of the Roses. I also have a sneaking suspicion they were probably behind the Black Death.
00:22:24
Speaker
The conflict that Richard III himself was involved in at the time of his death stemmed from the rivalry between two families, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. They were both descended from Plantagenet King Edward III, and they both claimed the throne of England. Now the War of the Roses actually gets its name from the emblems of each of those houses, a red rose and a white rose.
00:22:48
Speaker
And it was basically the escalation of these hostilities that happened between 1455 and 1485. Richard was a Yorkish king. And by the way, Yorkish is my new favorite word. Friary, you have been dethroned. I'm going to keep saying Yorkish as many times as possible. Richard, a Yorkish king, was defeated in battle by Henry Tudor, who was of the Lancaster family.
00:23:14
Speaker
So he was not Yorkish, he was Lancasterian. After battle he won, he became Henry VII.
00:23:25
Speaker
And he actually married the daughter of Richard's brother, Edward V, which pretty much united the two houses and made everything wonderful. It began a 117 year rule of the Tudors, the Tudor family, a very famous Tudor family, in England. And this was actually when the Lancaster, the Lancasters didn't adopt the red rose emblem until then. But the War of the Roses was like retroactively named, so. Anyway, the
00:23:53
Speaker
During the time of the Tudors, when they started ruling, they actually combined the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster to symbolize the union of the houses in what's known as the Tudor Rose. And, like I said, the War of the Roses was actually a name that was created by Sir Walter Scott after a scene from, it was actually inspired by Shakespeare's Henry VI.
00:24:15
Speaker
And it's now known as an adaptation of Shakespeare's history plays as well. Um, Henry the sixth, parts one, two, three, and Richard the third. And the original Royal Shakespeare Company's production starred none other, may I add, than everyone's favorite hobbit, Ian Holm, Bilbo Baggins, as Richard the third. Okay, I'm just gonna let you, I'm just gonna put it out here. Picture it right now.
00:24:41
Speaker
Bilbo Baggins playing Richard III. Awesome, I know! So, I'm sure you really want to discuss the relationship of Hobbits to the Kings of England, but I'm going to end this discussion. Sorry, maybe if you're next time.
00:24:57
Speaker
And I think what better way than to end with a quote from Shakespeare's Richard III, a play which I myself studied in college. I did a great monologue from it once as Queen Anne, but the speech of Richard at the beginning of the play is probably more familiar to you, and so I'm going to give you a little bit of Shakespeare for your afternoon. So here you have the infamous opening of Richard III performed for you by myself.
00:25:25
Speaker
yours truly in my best Shakespearean voice. Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York, and all the clouds that loured upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
00:25:43
Speaker
Now our hour brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarm's changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches, to delightful measures, Grim visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front.
00:26:02
Speaker
He sounds happy at the start, I have to explain it. His brother at King Edward has been victorious in battle, and the fog of war seems to be lifting from his lands. But don't be mistaken, Shakespeare's Richard is miserable, conniving, and unstoppable. He later proclaims, I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days.
00:26:27
Speaker
villain you may have been proven in prose sir but perhaps now that we know more of your story history might be a bit more forgiving and that's all for richer the third week anyway i just have one more thing uh to do today i i'm trying to keep this a little bit shorter so i'm gonna skip right to shorty news i think shorter news needs a jingle don't you let's see what sounds good shorty news shorty news shorty news
00:26:55
Speaker
It's got to be quick. I don't know. Shorty news. There you go. Shorty news. I'm going to sing it again. Shorty news with ceiling. Anyway, we're moving on to the shorty news. Today, I found this interesting story online.
Medieval Scientific Advances and Mummy Discussion
00:27:12
Speaker
I think I found it at archaeologica.org, but it's actually a story originally by Live Science, Stephanie Pappas, I believe.
00:27:19
Speaker
And the title caught my attention, okay? It's called Grotesque Mummy Head Reveals Advanced Medieval Science. And I sort of noticed this week maybe I tend to have a thing with mummies when I'm looking through for new stories. I don't know, but I guess I really like mummies for some reason. I mean, I do love the movie The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. Not really the third one, but anyway, I like Brendan Fraser, so I guess I'm into mummies. And so this is how the story goes.
00:27:48
Speaker
Let's see, it's about the study of the human body really, and it starts off with an explanation that the study of the human body went through a revolution in the second century AD because a Greco-Roman doctor named Galen began using his practice of treating gladiator's wounds to focus on the internal structure of man, which hadn't really been done too much before.
00:28:10
Speaker
Pretty much from this period through to the Renaissance, it's pretty much believed that cultural stigmas against human dissection kept medicinal study from advancing its knowledge on our anatomy. And so there's some new pictures released of what we're pretty much calling the oldest known preserved human dissection that we have. And it's in the form of a very well-preserved mummy. And it's actually just a man's head, neck, and shoulders, the top of his shoulders.
00:28:38
Speaker
And unfortunately, the top of this fellow's skull has been sawed off, revealing his brain. And all of these remains were preserved through the addition of a mercury and beeswax cocktail to his veins, which sounds delightful, doesn't it? Now, no, identity is known on the man, but radiocarbon dates placed his remains between 1200 and 1280 AD. And this relation...relation...revelation...
00:29:05
Speaker
Rather, this revelation changes some of our assumptions about the later dark ages. And research on this mommy is being done by Philippe Charlier and colleagues from the University Hospital R. Poncar in France.
00:29:22
Speaker
He says pretty much the expertise with which this dissection was performed really points toward a more developed anatomical knowledge and more practiced science than was previously known to exist. And historian James Hanam claims that there was a lot more advancement through the Dark and Middle Ages than we've been led to believe as far as science and medicine were concerned.
00:29:42
Speaker
There's actually a lot of propaganda and anti-Catholic rhetoric from the Protestant Church later on in the Renaissance, which pretty much was trying to cast a pall over the era of Catholic rule, and part of this was trying to erase the notion of advancements in the arts and sciences between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.
00:30:01
Speaker
So this crazy campaign included rumors that insisted that the medieval Christian church had banned autopsies in human dissection, even though the church had actually at times been sanctioning the internal study of individuals who maybe might have been considered for canonization. In fact, these holy autopsies, as they were called, included some awesome scientific discoveries.
00:30:25
Speaker
like the 1308 discovery of a tiny crucifix in the heart of an abbess named Chiara de Monte facto, and three gallstones in her gallbladder, which obviously represented the Holy Trinity and not the hardening of chemicals and bile into tiny stones meant to torture the owner of said gallbladder. For her suffering, the abbess was made a saint in 1881.
00:30:50
Speaker
I only find it odd that a lady with gallstones and a tiny crucifix in her heart didn't pass the saint test for 573 years. If anyone deserves sainthood, it's obviously this lady. So yeah, fellow mummy lovers, like myself, might enjoy a little science of the grotesque in today's shorty news.
00:31:10
Speaker
And by the way, that's mummy lovers, not mother lovers. That's a completely different thing. So I'm going to post some of those pictures of this fascinating and grotesque mummy on my website. And I just wonder, like, did he devote his body to science? Is that why he got chosen to have his skull sawed off? I don't know. I guess they're thinking he is probably like a mental patient or a corpse that, you know, of a homeless person that was never claimed. Anyway.
00:31:39
Speaker
I guess there are worse things than becoming a mummy known worldwide for having your head sawed off. I'll have the pictures up on my website, www.jennifermcniven.com, and on the Facebook page for the struggling archaeologist's guide to getting dirty. So make sure you like it, make sure you check them out, and let's just give this gentleman a silent round of applause, alright? Thank you for your sacrifice, Mr. Headless Mummy Man.
00:32:06
Speaker
And that's going to do it for this week, guys. Sorry I took up so much time talking about Richard III, but what can I say? Hunchbacks get me hot. Kidding. I mean, excited. Anyway, I've got a couple other stories I'm pushing to next week. It's going to be pretty exciting. We're talking about the discovery of a new Y chromosome chain that seems to have separated and pushes back the development of that particular chain about 400,000 years. So that's pretty exciting.
00:32:36
Speaker
And there's also going to be a story about the discovery of some new apocryphal Christian texts that claim Jesus happened to be a shapeshifter. So I think that's going to be pretty exciting. So tune in next time to the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Getting Dirty. Send me your questions, comments to www.
00:32:59
Speaker
you can comment on the blog post for this episode or you can send me an email at guide2gettingdirty at gmail.com thank you ever so much I think it's about time for my glass of scotch I think I deserve it I mean I have been spouting out some pretty awesome knowledge so we'll catch you guys on the flippity flip yeah yeah yeah I know for those of you
00:33:27
Speaker
Who noticed? Yeah, I stole it from the office, okay? Sorry, but like I said, my love is undying, and I love Michael Scott. The end. McNiven out!