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Alexander the Great's (Alleged) Tunic - TAS 286
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This week we take a look at 3 recent news stories that supposedly solved a famous historical mystery. First up, the identity of the famous “horeseman” burial has possibly been identified. Then, a scrap of fabric from a tomb in Greece may have belonged to Alexander the Great. Finally, archaeologists have “solved” the mystery of the Roanoake’s lost colony. Were any of these mysteries truly solved? You decide!
Links
- Archaeologists Identified the Body of the Famed “Horseman,” Solving a 300-Year-Old Mystery (Apple News)
- 'Purple tunic' from royal tomb belonged to Alexander the Great, scholar claims — but not everyone agrees
- Greek Researcher Claims Ancient Tunic Scrap Was Alexander the Great’s. Experts Aren’t Convinced
- The Identification of the Sacred “Chiton” (Sarapis) of Pharaoh Alexander the Great in Tomb II at Vergina, Macedonia, Greece (Journal of Field Archaeology)
- Experts Claim They Have Solved The Roanoke Mystery After The Colony Vanished In 1590 (Apple News)
- Archaeologists May Have Finally Solved the Mystery of the Disappearance of Roanoke’s Lost Colony
- Fort Raleigh National Historic Site
- Join the ArchPodNet Discord (Free!)
Contact
- Chris Webster
[email protected] - Rachel Roden
[email protected]
RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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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.
Focus on Historical Mysteries
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 286. On today's show, we talk about three historical mysteries that have been, quote-unquote, solved by archeology.
10-Year Anniversary Announcement
00:00:28
Speaker
Let's dig a little deeper. Don't forget about the 8 p.m. 10-year anniversary on the 24th. I thought you were going to say something about digging into a tunic. Well, it will tune it up nicely.
00:00:44
Speaker
Welcome to The Archaeology
Recent Archaeological News
00:00:45
Speaker
Show. Hello. It's another articles show. Yes. Because we're catching up. We are catching up. And it's kind of what we do. Yeah, well, there's been so much good news lately. So, you know, we had to have a couple. Well, good news in the face of bad news. We're going to talk about that. Wow, OK. Well, yeah. We're not happy about recent news, but there is some great archaeology news that we are happy about.
Excitement Over Solved Mysteries
00:01:08
Speaker
Indeed. So, yeah. Yeah, the theme of this episode is,
00:01:12
Speaker
I guess famous mysteries. I don't know if they're famous, but mysteries being solved by archeology. Yeah. And I, I super love this because I love a good historical mystery. Like I, I'm one of those people that'll like deep dive something like hard trying to figure out why or what or who or whatever. So when archeology pops up and goes, Hey, we've got the answer. Like that's even more exciting, right? Indeed.
00:01:38
Speaker
Of course, it's never 100%, right? As we're gonna find with all three of these stories, I think, like, archeology might have found the answer. Oh, it's always a might. It's always a might. Yeah, except for one part of this next story we're totally
Humor in Archaeological Media
00:01:50
Speaker
like. Yeah. So this next story is from a magazine from the the popular version of the mechanics, not the unpopular version. Because nobody wants to read unpopular mechanics. You lose your mind every time we have an article from Popular Mechanics. But I don't know what to tell you. you Why would you read unpopular mechanics? They do some archaeology content and we
The Horseman Mystery
00:02:10
Speaker
like it. So I think what it is you know lies with any magazine There's got to be our articles that just like didn't make it and that really should be called unpopular mechanics and they should have a website for that Yeah, anyway, anyway archaeologists identified the body of the famed horseman Solving a 300 year old mystery and again, I think famed but I don't know anyway
00:02:30
Speaker
Well, he was kind of famous in his time. Once they figured out who he was, but they're called the Horseman famed. But the Horseman, we'll get to that, yeah has only been known for two years, really. Right. so Okay.
Joachim Du Bellay's Burial
00:02:42
Speaker
So apparently the body of a famed Renaissance poet whose name, I'm going to butcher, his name is his name is in French. And I don't know how to pronounce his first name, but Jochim or Jochim Dubalet. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know how to pronounce that first part in French.
00:02:56
Speaker
I don't know either because my brain immediately goes to Spanish because it's J-O-A and that's a pretty common Spanish thing, but it's not. I don't know how to pronounce it. I have no idea. Anyway, who's lost to history? His body was. Since 1560, no one knew where he was buried, but in 1758, according to the article, archeologists, which I put in quotes, because I've been an archeologist since 1758.
00:03:21
Speaker
When looking under Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, that that Notre Dame, where they believed he was buried alongside his uncle and found nothing. Yeah. And then in 2022, an unmarked body nicknamed the Horseman because the bone structure showed that he had ridden horses from a young age. which I feel like that would be pretty common back in that time period. So like, is it really a distinguishing feature to call them the horsemen? I don't think so. I mean, I think it would be because I don't think everybody could necessarily afford a horse. Oh yeah, I guess that was probably a nobility type thing. You had to be in the higher classes to be riding horses a lot. Yeah, higher class. I don't know about nobility, but higher class for sure. Yeah, higher class, yeah. Anyway, so this body was found under the cathedral. Right, which we'll get to why I was under the cathedral here in a moment. But experts now believe, we'll get to the punchline, that this is the guy. Yeah, that this horseman body is the missing poet body. They are one and the same.
00:04:16
Speaker
So, back up a little bit, after the fire in 2019 that I'm assuming everybody's heard about, yeah the Cathedral Burst into Flames, yeah the French Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research, whose acronym does not include most of those letters, is in rap.
00:04:33
Speaker
This is the second time we've talked about this preventative archeological thing, because we talked about it last week in last week's episode.
Sarcophagi Under Notre Dame
00:04:40
Speaker
I think so. Yeah, I guess that's what they call it there. I'm sure the French translation has different letters, but in rap is the acronym, in French probably. Yeah, I'm talking about using the word preventative, because it's funny. Oh, right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we talked about how it was funny last week, too. Yeah, totally.
00:05:01
Speaker
and Anyway, they were one of the firms in charge of restoration and they made this announcement. Archaeologists discovered 100, exactly 100 apparently, unknown burials under Notre Dame. um And apparently between the 14th and 18th centuries, now this is just, this is a big famous cathedral that people go to for you know tourism, but it's actually also just like you know a church. yeah cathedral yeah Between the 14th and 18th centuries, thousands of people were actually buried in the necropolis associated with the church and the cathedral is built largely on top of the cemetery, yeah this necropolis that was associated with this whole thing.
00:05:38
Speaker
Well, it makes sense. I mean, you see those those pictures of just like skulls lining the walls of an underground like cavern looking thing. that's what That's what this is. This is where people in that time period in this place were were' buried. right It was their burial practice. So yeah.
00:05:54
Speaker
Well, two of the 100 unknown burials were kind of set apart from the others just in function and form in being that they were in their own lead sarcophagi. Fancy. Yeah, well the others were basically in wooden or the remains of wooden coffins. Right. Yeah, so these were different. They were also in a more prominent location underneath the cathedral where they're near the cathedral's main wings crossed, kind of crossed each other. Yeah, because cathedrals are usually like cross-shaped, right? And so you've got the main long section and then like a cross piece, I guess, you know, because of church stuff. Yeah. Church things and stuff. Church stuff. Church stuff. Yeah. So anyway, it was a more prominent location than the others. And so they figured these guys were important. So it's really kind of cool. And I wish, you know, all archaeology was like this. But one of the sarcophaguses was easy to identify because it was labeled. Yeah. Hey, thanks for the label, guys. Appreciate it. Yeah.
00:06:55
Speaker
But that was priest Antoine de la Porte, who died in 1710 after 50 years of service at Notre Dame. So he worked there. It was buried at work, which is pretty much everybody's worst nightmare. Well, that's a priest for you, though, right? He was probably honored to be buried there. He was literally buried in his job. Buried in his job. But was he a super special priest? Why did he get the super special sarcophagus, I wondered? I mean, 50 years at the church. Well, yeah. I'm wondering, was he just cleaning it and fell in? And they're just like, all right.
00:07:25
Speaker
ah No. The other was not labeled and took two years to identify them. Right. That's what not labeling does to you. Yes, it does. It's like when you move and you got this box, you just don't want to unpack. So Eric Shaboozie. No, not correct. Wait, Eric Croupezi. There you go. Good job. Probably still pronouncing that wrong. Maybe. I don't know. That looks about right. We say things phonetically or how they're spelled, not how they're- As English speakers phonetically. yeah Yes. yeah Anyway, biological anthropologist and research director with INRAP said the person died of chronic tuberculosis and meningitis in the 16th century during his 30s. And they know that from an analysis of the remains, which is pretty cool. You can tell that.
00:08:08
Speaker
Research suggested that the two bodies reoccupied a grave that had housed two people well known in their time. Right. So they kind of like either pulled two people out and stuck yeah these guys in, but they suggested that they weren't the original occupiers of those graves. Okay. Yeah, which was interesting. Yeah. So, which was possibly why they were in such a prominent location. I don't know where the original two occupiers of those graves were or how they knew that. It just said research suggests.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, so then the one that has a label on it, how do they know for sure that the one that's in there is is who it says it is? They really dial into that either. Yeah. Was that the priest? i guess we man Yeah, I don't know. Maybe the remains matched what we know about that priest and when he died. Right. I don't know. All right. Well, I guess you just kind of have to go with it. I guess we'll have to ask Shaboozie, but we don't know who he is. so anyway So they started looking at people that could fit the profile of the other unknown one, assuming the label and the other guy was right. Yeah. And Du Behe turned up. Yeah. Because they they were looking at, again, the time period, the the ailments, and this guy just totally fit the right. Yeah. And who was supposed to be buried there, too? Because they do have historical records from this time period. So they have an idea of who should be there. Right.
Challenges in Identification
00:09:22
Speaker
It's a cathedral. yeah in a church before that, before they built a cathedral, and they really did keep meticulous records at the church. i mean I'm sure over time some have been lost here and there. sure there's There's things, there's inconsistencies that maybe made sense at the time, but doesn't make sense to us now. So like I'm sure there's some struggles with you know going through those records. but So interesting thing about Dubelé to match him up with the horseman. Dubelé was an accomplished horseman. He suffered from both conditions mentioned in, and they were mentioned in some of his poems, so the conditions of the the horseman. That was tuberculosis and meningitis.
00:09:57
Speaker
and Interesting. If you read the article, you can hear some of the, they they have excerpts of some of his poems where he mentioned this like fog of brain and stuff, just some of the conditions that somebody suffering from these two, yeah these two things would really kind of talk about. It's like the symptoms, the symptoms that he would have had, he's talking about in his poems and those symptoms match the conditions that this body displayed.
00:10:19
Speaker
In that timeframe, they may not even have known what he had. Yeah, exactly. they might I can't imagine they had those words, tuberculosis and meningitis at that time. They have known about tuberculosis, but did you call it that? Yeah, exactly. yeah They had other words for it. but yeah Anyway, and his family belonged to the Royal Court and the um were in the Pope's close entourage, so his father, him and his uncle apparently were supposed to have been buried buried there and that would have made sense. Well, because if he died in his 30s, I'm guessing he died before his father. So if he had an uncle buried there already, then it would make sense that his family would be like, well, this is his closest family member who has passed away. So let's put him near yeah that family member. That makes sense. Right. Christophe Besnier. I'm going to go ahead and pronounce it maybe French-ish.
00:11:04
Speaker
Another in-rap archaeologist said the man buried likely grew up in Paris or Lyon due to the isotope analysis of teeth and bones. Now, this is the one thing that yeah yeah this is the one thing that says that maybe it's not him. But it's only one thing of a lot of things because when you do that isotopic analysis, he didn't actually grow up there du ballet didn't Yeah, it's believed that Dubelé was born in Anjou in Western France and later moved to Paris, dying around the age of 35. But I want to know what later means. right Was he born there and then five years later he moved to Paris? Because then maybe his teeth would match. Baby teeth, right? like he must If his baby teeth fell out and these are his adult teeth,
00:11:47
Speaker
right that that picked up the Paris characteristics, then then that would be fine. But I mean, these are smart people. I'm sure they thought about that too. so But I am curious when he moved to France or to Paris.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, and it's hard to say too, cause these people, if he's part of like a, you know, more of a prominent family, they've got money. I mean, sure, he may have been raised somewhere and grew up somewhere, but you got money. You don't just like live there your whole life. You travel frequently. So is the nicest topic analysis of your teeth really going to show where you grew up?
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like it's- Where your food came from? It's not like it's stratigraphy, right? It's not like a layers of of your history of of where you were. it's It's sort of this mishmash of yeah what markers of what isotopes you find in the teeth. So I feel like it probably is still a pretty good argument for Dubalay, just given the other things, that the diseases in the skeleton, the horsemanship, and where it's buried. Like you have to be special and important to be buried in this cathedral, right? and yeah So like what other 30-year-old who rode horses a lot and also had these diseases would have the clout the familial clout to be buried in this church? So even though it is a little bit weird that the isotopes don't match up, it still feels like a pretty good guess.
00:13:05
Speaker
But that's all archaeology ever is, right? Right. It's a guess, and a hope, and a maybe. All right. Well, on the other side of the break, we're going to find out some other guesses and hopes and maybes about Alexander the Great's Tuning. Should we just call this episode Guess, Hope, Maybe? Guesses, Hopes, and Maybes. Yes. but Back in a minute.
00:13:24
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 286 of The Archaeology Show. And listen, before we get to the tunic, just because some people fast forward to the end and don't listen to us all the way, I do have to mention this is the last episode before our 10th anniversary live stream on our Discord.
00:13:42
Speaker
I think it's the second last episode, because we released weekly. So there'll be one on. Well, you'll hear this again. yeah so Anyway, on the 24th of November, 2024, in case you're listening to this in real time, yeah that's right. We do release weekly. We we do. And there's two more weeks. As it turns out. and Shoot. Anyway.
00:13:58
Speaker
So, anyway, well, 24th of November on our Discord, and I don't even know if we have a link to our Discord yet in our show notes, but we really should. Yeah, we'll get that in there. Yeah, we need to put that in there. Anyway, if you can find it on our Instagram, our Podnet, in our show, not in our about us, the the Discord's
Live Stream Event Announcement
00:14:13
Speaker
in there. yeah But if you go over there, there's a whole live thing, literally all day long. I think Eastern time, we go on at 4 p.m. Eastern time in the United States. yeah I believe that's when we go on. But it's a whole live thing. You'll see us live.
00:14:26
Speaker
We're basically, if literally nobody, you of none of you guys show up, then we're just going to do this yeah we're gonna do a live show yeah yeah with our videos on and all that stuff. I'm hoping if it's nice, we're going to sit out in the back of my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's house here by the fire pit. That's kind of what I'm hoping just from a We'll see. We'll see if the weather's good. It is the end of the middle of November. Otherwise, we'll just be inside and it'll be boring. Yeah, we'll just entertain your questions and talk to you and stuff like that. You won't be on camera. You'll be able to ask questions. But anyway, it'll be really fun. Yeah, just mark your calendars for the 24th and follow our social media. You'll see more about it because there's a bunch of shows doing various things throughout that day. Yes, all day long, it's going to be different things. So you can find your favorite show and join in. But if you really like this show, 4 o'clock Eastern. So 4 PM Eastern. Anyway, I got to give the movie reference for this episode. And that's going to be for this one. The movie reference? The movie reference. Oh, God, what now?
00:15:21
Speaker
It is such a deep track. Oh, God. and it's Nobody's even going to get it. Literally, nobody is going to understand this reference but me. But every time I see the word tunic, and we see it often doing archaeological research for these articles, I think of the movie A Knight's Tale.
00:15:37
Speaker
What? Because they wear tunics? No, because when he's like when he's in he's got to go to this dance, right and he doesn't want to go to this dance, and they teach him how to dance. yeah And one of his like friends, who happens to be able to sew, he has to do he he has to create he he has to make him something to wear. yeah And they find this like curtain or something like that that is green, and it matches her dress that the other woman's going to wear. And he's like, oh, yeah, that'll tunic up nicely.
00:16:04
Speaker
He says those phrases. You're such a weirdo. Where do you even come up? Like, how does that stay in your brain? I don't understand. Every time I, like, when we put this in the notes and I was like, oh, that'll tune it up nicely. I literally said it every single time. And there's your window into Chris's brain and also my life, because I have to live with that brain. I just imagine somebody said to Alexander the Great when he's like, man, I really need something. And somebody in his entourage was like, yeah, that'll tune it up nicely.
00:16:33
Speaker
Why are you like this? Why do you subject me to this? So anyway, there's like. But I do love that movie. The late great Heath Ledger. I mean, I'm down for it any time. If you haven't seen it, it's a. It's dumb, but it's fun. It's a fun take. They use like modern music. None of it's real. No, it's just fun. I mean, come on. It's a fun movie. It's old too, because we old. It's from like 90s. It's probably 20 years old. I think it's from the 2000s. I think it's the 2000s. Maybe it is, yeah. Anyway, so. OK, enough of that. Yeah. So they, uh, there's a few actually links to this article. What's to this story? Yes. This story definitely made the rounds and I have an alert for textiles, a Google alert, which I've talked about before. So I always hear about this stuff, but I got paid like six times from six different news sources all about this. And I guess it's partly because there's a bit of a controversy about it, which we will get to shortly, but it's definitely been making the rounds lately. Yeah.
00:17:28
Speaker
So the article that we like the best is from Live Science. It feels like it does a really good job of like describing the this or potential tunic.
Alexander the Great's Textile
00:17:38
Speaker
We're going to have to put tunic in quotations right now and we'll get to why. But it does a really good job of explaining the science behind it and what the author of the paper is saying. And then also having at the end some of the like, not controversy so much, but just like the people who are like, slow down, take a breath, do we actually know this? So I like seeing both sides of the story there.
00:17:57
Speaker
Okay, so what is this? This is a fragment of cloth that was found in a royal tomb in Greece, and it was found in the 70s, so it's been decades. Hey, did everything from the 70s was just decades? You can't just describe it as decades. Almost a half century ago. Come on. Almost. and And it might be the remains of a tunic once wore by Alexander the Great.
00:18:21
Speaker
And there's two mites in there. It might be a tunic, and that tunic, if it is a tunic, might have been worn by Alexander the Great. So there's a lot of mites. There's a lot of maybes in there. Yeah, let's get to it. So the remains of the garment were found during an excavation of a cluster of royal tombs that were believed to have belonged to several members of Alexander the Great's family. yeah This is all very, just like, suspect.
00:18:48
Speaker
Well, no, these tombs definitely are for members of of Alexander the Great's family. sure And well, for high ranking Macedonian yeah people, Greek people, right? So they they definitely are that. And there's a lot of evidence that they are part of the family because of the there's elaborate paintings on a lot of the tombs and stuff like that. So they do have pretty good evidence that these are members of the royal family.
00:19:12
Speaker
but who and which members are what has been in contention kind of for a long time, so. And these tombs are located in what is today the small town of Virgina? Virgina, probably, no Greek. V-E-R-G-I-N-A, Virgina in northern Greece. And in Alexander the Great's time, it was the city of Egea, which was the capital of Macedonia in the fourth century BCE. So that's the timeframe we're talking here.
00:19:41
Speaker
These three tunes, they were excavated in the 70s, and they're just very creatively called Tomb One, Tomb Two, and Tomb Three. Yes, welcome to archaeology. yeah And this purple fragment was found in Tomb Two.
00:19:53
Speaker
Okay, so the commonly accepted theory is that this tomb belonged to Alexander the Great's father, Philip II.
Identity of Royal Tombs
00:19:59
Speaker
He wasn't Philip the Great or Philip the Minor, just Philip II. No, he wasn't great yet. He hadn't conquered all of Persia, basically. so yeah And this ah primarily because of the wealth of gold, silver, and bronze found within the tomb. so And that was still in there when they excavated, yeah that's what it said in the thing. Yeah, they found all that. It hadn't been looted, I guess, so they have all that. There's this beautiful like gold It looks like leaves made out of gold and into like a wreath, basically, that you would have worn on your head. Like a Greek style like wreath, right? But it's fully made out of gold. It's beautiful. So they found all that kind of stuff in these in these tombs. Nice. And that purple textile, of course, was one of the things that they found in there. Sure.
00:20:39
Speaker
The textile itself is made of two layers of cotton that have been dyed Tyrian purple, and we've talked about Tyrian purple before. It's basically this color that's made by squeezing stuff out of the clans of sea snails. Milking sea snails. Sea snails, yeah. Super gross, but it creates this really beautiful purple that is super expensive, hard to acquire, and only for really, really royal and fancy people, right? I feel like I'll have really achieved my wealth and success when I can hire someone to milk sea snails. You probably could. I think there's probably people still doing it today. It's a level of rich that you just can't comprehend. Yeah. And then between these two layers of purple cotton, there is this white mineral called huntite, which I thought was weird to have a white mineral, but I guess it's kind of a powdery type thing. I don't really know.
00:21:34
Speaker
It might have just degraded away over time and it was just another layer of cloth in between that had that mineral on it. I'm not really sure. They didn't do a super good job of describing that part. Maybe it's their version of mithril. It's just like worn away. Well, I thought maybe it was like for insulation or something, but it's a mineral. So I don't know what a mineral is going to do for insulation.
00:21:51
Speaker
I mean, given where the tomb is and something like that, I wonder if, is there a chance that it's maybe flooded before or does that mineral found anywhere else in the tomb? It's just between these two pieces of fabric. So it does seem intentional yeah and it's white, like it makes a white, a bright white color. Like you can use it to dye things white. So like it might've just been part of, cause there's, it's white and purple, this creation process. Yeah, it could just be from that. So.
00:22:14
Speaker
So anyway, well, we do have a new paper about all of this. So this is published in the peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Field Archaeology, and the author is Antonis Bartsiokas. And he is re-examining basically all the evidence around this textile. He did not touch it by hand. He just is re-examining it. The cotton was not grown in Greece during Alexander's time, so it had to have been imported from Persia, one of the areas conquered by Alexander the Great. yeah Which makes sense. Purple is the color reserved for kings of Persia, which purple is reserved for the color of royalty pretty much everywhere for all time because of how it was extracted. It was really hard. yeah so that's That's pretty much common anytime you see purple anywhere. Yeah, but specifically cotton that is purple yeah would have only been for Persian kings, because cotton wasn't found outside of Persia until it was
Philip II or Arhidius?
00:23:03
Speaker
exported out. So that's part of this argument. yeah yeah So Philip II would not have been allowed to wear that color. Yeah, because he's not a king of Persia. He was a king, but not a king of Persia. So he wouldn't have been allowed. according this is This is the argument being made in this newspaper, that he wouldn't have been allowed to wear the purple. So yeah yeah. and Alexander and the rulers that came after him could wear it, since they were the new kings of Persia. Yeah, yeah that's that's the argument. Yeah, so he basically stole it and said, I'm getting buried with this. yeah yeah He conquered, but but i I mean, it does make a compelling argument though, right? That like Philip II wouldn't have had a purple tunic because the Persians would never have exported a purple tunic to him right because he wasn't their king. I don't know if that really takes into account like humans and how humans behave, but that's the argument. We'll get to that. Okay, so there's another reason that doesn't relate to this textile that Bartiocas says that that that this tomb too could not have been Philip II.
00:23:59
Speaker
This is because the skeletal remains that are in this tomb do not show evidence of an eye injury that we know for sure that Philip had. So, I mean, it sounds like the skeletal remains in there definitely are not in Philip's second. It should be obvious, right? And that's visible on the skeletal remains, like a bone visible injury. That's pretty conclusive. Yeah, they didn't go too much into detail on that. And I'm like, well, would the eye injury have actually made a mark on the bones? Maybe the eye injury is there and we just can't see it in the bones. If he got hit with something like a blunt object, you would see that. You would see a healed injury. Yeah. Yes, you would. Unless it killed him. Right. But if it was an injury in a different way that didn't leave a mark on the bones, you wouldn't see it. Well, if he just got poked in the eye and he lost his eye, you might not see that. Exactly. Right. So what was the eye injury? Yeah, they didn't go into great detail there. Well, if they're just saying they didn't see evidence of the eye injury, they must think it's an injury that would have had a mark on the bone. They do, yes. That seems like it's- That's what they're saying. Yeah, it's implied. Okay, so moving from there, the author of the paper, he's basically arguing that this tomb, because of all those reasons we just said, does not belong to Philip II, and instead it belongs to Alexander the Great's older half-brother, Arhidius.
00:25:11
Speaker
just hideous that's Our That is hideous. Our hideous? Our hideous. Our hideous. Our hideous. Our hideous, yeah. And that's because he succeeded him in 323 BCE when Alexander the Great died. So yeah, he's a king, right? He's the king of Persia. So he gets to have the purple. There's no eye injury. And yeah, so maybe it is him.
00:25:33
Speaker
So, he was killed in 317 BCE, e and the empire pretty much fell apart after that. yeah So, Barzayokas also argues that the purple tunic first belonged to Alexander, and then was passed to Arhadeus after he died. yeah I mean, this purple tunic, though...
00:25:50
Speaker
It's just a piece of clothing. Do they really care about it that much? Well, they're putting so much stock in the fact that Persians wouldn't allow anybody other than their king to wear purple. Right. Like that's what the whole argument is built on. But these people were like uber rich and I understand a purple cotton tunic would have been, you know, something reserved for Persian kings, but wouldn't he have had like 20 of them? Yeah, right. Well, OK, so that actually gets to the next thing, which is so that's a good segue you didn't even know you were doing. Yeah, I've read the notes. No, I know you did, but you didn't know which one was coming up next. So there's the other reasoning that this tunic first belonged to Alexander and then was passed to his older brother when he died is because there's artwork on the wall of the tomb showing Alexander the Great wearing a tunic that is very similar to the textile that was found. Kind of begs, kind of, yeah, it goes to my point. He probably had dozens of these things. Yes, and one more thing, there is a ancient description from an ancient source that describes the sacred Persian Meselicon Serapis, which belonged to Pharaoh and King Alexander the Great. This is from an ancient source. So again, its description is in historical texts. So there's a lot of reasons why Alexander the Great would have worn a purple tunic. One how. He was fashionable.
00:27:09
Speaker
So, I mean, I think there's a really solid maybe here. Yeah. Yeah. So one scholar Hericlia Bricolocchi says that there's no evidence to support the idea that this fabric, this piece of textile is actually a tunic.
The Purple Textile's Significance
00:27:24
Speaker
And according to them, the textile, according to the excavators, looked more like a piece of scarf that would have wrapped the bones of the deceased.
00:27:32
Speaker
ah so So first question here is, is this actually a tunic? right Or is it just a piece of fabric? It was purple though. So like are you wrapping deceased in this really, really hard to acquire fabric? I don't know. You'd wrap a king in it. and I guess you would wrap a king in it. So maybe. So it's a good argument. You'd wrap a king in it. Yeah.
00:27:53
Speaker
And I think they just have a tiny fabric, so they don't have the whole thing. They don't have any seams showing that it was sewn together like a tunic or whatever. So, yeah. And then another scholar, Athanasia Kirikow, says the assumptions being drawn are ignoring the complete archaeological background of the site, and also that Bartziyokas did not conduct any tests on the material and actually has not even seen them. So he's just kind of going off the notes and and what was done. so And the past test, the test from the past. Well, test from the past. Honestly? Test from the 70s? I think it was later than that, but yeah. Okay, but still. So here's my thing. I put that quote in there because I felt like it was important to say why other Greek scholars yeah are disagreeing, but doesn't that disagreement feel a little bit like somebody who is pushing back because they don't want to change their assumptions?
00:28:40
Speaker
I mean, sure. That's how that argument came across to me a little bit. Like they just didn't want to, they weren't interested in having this reexamination of this piece. They had this assumption that they were already holding for the last 20, 30 years or whatever, and they weren't interested in changing that. I mean, here's where I'm at. Do we think this is a piece of purple cotton fabric from the 300s BCE, Alexander the Great's timeframe in Russia? Yes, we do. Yeah, we definitely know that for sure. 100%. full stop period. Who cares about the rest? No, it's important who it belonged to. Who cared if even, okay, it belonged to probably a Persian king, right? Yeah. It belonged to a royal family member in the Alexander the Great family. Alexander the Great actually wore it is kind of where I'm at. We get hung up on that. The history is still super cool. It was probably near him. It was part of this whole Alexander the Great mythos sort of thing. Yeah, definitely. All of that's true. All of that's super cool. It would be really neat if you could say that whatever this painting was Somebody probably saw that scene or it came out of their head, right? Just like magically out of their head. They like, I want to paint this thing. Or they actually saw this scene and said, I want to paint that. Nobody was probably standing there saying, get on with the painting. We're standing here, right? That's not how that worked. It wasn't a photograph, but.
00:30:01
Speaker
if he was actually wearing the thing that they found would be highly unlikely because like I said, he probably had a hundred of them, yeah right? So it's just, who cares? yeah Get on with it. you You nailed down where it was and where it came from and it probably belonged to that family. Move on with your life and study something else. The thing that I get a little bit hung up on is this hard stop. Persian people would not have exported purple cotton to anybody.
00:30:27
Speaker
because it's only for their kings. I'm just like, people will do anything for money. And you cannot tell me that there's not a cotton merchant or a cotton dyer in Persia at this timeframe that got offered like a boatload of money to make a tunic for some dude. I just feel like they would have done it. Money talks, money talks. I understand that. And there's an underground market, and if you got a future family, you'll get it out. But if you get found out not selling to the Persian royal family, and you're selling to somebody else, you're probably going to die. If they had full control over the production process of this purple, and it didn't go outside of the royal cloth makers or whatever, then sure, yeah. Wouldn't surprise me. That's possible.
00:31:18
Speaker
If that was a royal thing, like people be people. That's all I'm saying. like You get the opportunity to like make a bunch of money to raise your status, whatever. And it just requires breaking this one rule. Like I totally see people doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know. I think it's so interesting. And I love this argument, this back and forth argument about what about whose tomb it is, even though in the end, I guess it doesn't really matter, but it is just still fun to speculate. And yeah I also like to see a person who is challenging status quo because just because it's a long held assumption doesn't mean that it's true, especially in archeology where you're always drawing assumptions and it's just changing from one assumption to
The Roanoke Colony Mystery
00:31:57
Speaker
another assumption. I get that, but it's just fun to speculate and just make sure that you're taking into account all the evidence when you are speculating. So all right I don't know. I kind of love it. well
00:32:08
Speaker
Another long-held assumption is that one of the early colonies in America stayed in the Outer Banks. But maybe they just thought that show was stupid and they went inland. Back on the other side. No, we're not talking about that show.
00:32:21
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 286. So many episodes. Of The Archaeology Show. All right. Yeah. Don't forget November 24th. Yeah, definitely. Be there or be square. Oh my God. What does being square mean, exactly? Like boring? Yeah. Like you're a square? Yeah, welcome to the 80s.
00:32:41
Speaker
Look, I was a child in the 80s, okay? Yeah, but you don't know what square meant. Anyway, so we have another historical mystery. Yes, and the cool kind of thing about this is just almost on a, almost kind of on a lark in the last few days before we left the Outer Banks, back when we were RVers a couple of months ago. Back before we lived in my sister's basement.
00:33:05
Speaker
ah this national park was just like on our route. Yeah. And I thought we were going to stop for just like maybe 10 minutes or so. I never had that thought. Check out the visitor center. I never believed that. Right. and We stopped at the, the Roanoke Fort, what what was it actually called? Fort Raleigh. fort raleig That's right. raley National historic site. i think Right. Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. and We went in to actually have a pretty decent visitor center with some artifacts that have been pulled up from there. Really some great artifacts too. like yeah yeah like they had They found some really good stuff when they've done excavations in this area. and It just so happened they had a ranger-led
00:33:38
Speaker
discussion and part and like, like trip around the park, um, planned and, and Rachel's like, Oh yeah, let's do that. and And I was like, I want to get back on the road. Cause they're like a seven hour drive that day. It's not that bad. And we were going to a park where we had a good spot, ready to go. It was fine. I am a sucker yeah for a ranger led talk.
00:33:56
Speaker
I have, I have to say for it. We get out there and it turns out it's just the two of us and I'm like, I'm like, Oh, Hey ranger Dave, how, how long is this? And he's like, Oh, it's no more than like an hour, an hour and a half. 45 minutes, 45 minutes. And you know what? You're Mr. Chatty and you have to get in there and start asking questions. So you're the one who makes it take longer. I mean, if we're doing it, we're doing it.
00:34:20
Speaker
ah Anyway, we can't really recommend a visit to the Fort Raleigh historical site enough. If you're interested in that kind of stuff, yeah it was kind you like a good tour and you're into this mystery. And I've said this before, but I'm from North Carolina. So like the Roanoke colony that disappeared in the 1500s was just probably one of the very first things that got me interested in archeology, even though I didn't even know it was archeology yet. Just interested in history and the mystery around it and like,
00:34:50
Speaker
If you can solve it, which you can't, and we'll find out that you still really can't solve it, but... For all of you, this is for people in the United States, because our Australian listeners and UK listeners, they're like, we're on a who now? Yeah. Maybe the UK listeners are like, yeah, we send people over there and you sent them back. But anyway. Yeah, we'll go through the real quick history of it. But for my West Coast homies in the United States, yeah, I know we didn't learn about this. And if we did, it was like a footnote in one of our books, because up in Washington, I learned about totem poles and people who settled Washington and things like that, which was still super cool. But when we learned about early US history, I mean, this wasn't as big a deal. I know. Well, I'll tell you what. On my side of the country, you know what wasn't a big deal? Lewis and Clark. It was a little blip. It was a footnote. Yeah. For you? Yeah. Probably like a whole chapter, right? I mean, it was a big deal because otherwise Washington and Morgan wouldn't exist. Right, exactly. It's crazy how the regional differences in teaching are when you're younger. When you get older, obviously, you dial into the details. Anyway, we learned about Jamestown and pilgrims and Plymouth Rock and all that stuff. But Roanoke was nothing. Well, it was big in mine. And it might have just been my brain making it bigger, too, because I was fascinated. And I'm still fascinated. Well, you've got an entire county and areas named after a baby. So let's get into it. We do. OK, let's do it. All right, so in 1585, English settlers reached the New World and established a colony on the island of Roanoke in what is now part of North Carolina. In the other banks. in the outer banks, but not... Kind of like the middle banks. Yeah, it's like in between the mainland and the outer banks, basically. There's an island called Roanoke, and that is where they were establishing this colony, right? And then a couple of years later, it mysteriously vanished. That's the... That's your bird's eye view. That's what happened.
00:36:39
Speaker
The story actually starts with Sir Walter Raleigh, incidentally, another city and yeah rally raley capital in North Carolina Raleigh. He was given a charter by Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth is part of a little island one a little island in the Atlantic called England. anyway to build a colony in the new world, right? And because to be honest, they were having, they were at odds with Spain at the time. And Spain was like, we're going to take that place. Gonna play a role here yeah in a moment. We'll get there. But yeah. So they were like, we need to get in there. Yeah. And she was like, she was like, Walt, go over there and establish a colony. He's like, okay. I like to think that she called him Walt. I really hope she did and he was like Liz. I'm on it They do have ah a very storied history those two so needs to be an Netflix show just called Walton with Walton Liz Yeah, well, so there's a lot of there's a lot of shows about them. Yeah, but anyway Yeah. ah So one of the requirements of the charter was that he established a colony by 1591 or lose it. Yeah. So she's like, you got a deadline. Yeah. It started with a military colony in 1585. And among the people in that colony was a guy named John White. Yes.
00:37:57
Speaker
Now, John White was an artist. And so his role in this first colony, this first exploration was as an artist. He was there to document the flora and the fauna, draw maps, do all that kind of stuff. And again, that is very important. And it will play a role later on in this mystery. Incidentally on the tour and in the visitor center of the historic part of the park, yeah the park ranger, he had these like big cards and he was using those to help guide the discussion. And he had John White drawn, I think flowers and some maps that John White drew and they were actually super cool. They were so good. Yeah. And, and there are still some of those maps that exist and one of them's in the British museum. And yeah again, I don't want to like jump the, jump the gun here, but like it's going to play a big role into what happened to this colony later on. So I'm going to fight to get that back to North Carolina British Museum, please. Well, he was British and he took it back with England. So I mean, it's OK. It's OK. It's all right that it's there. That map's basically Native American. So it's OK. So this military colony, this initial colony, they built Fort Raleigh.
00:39:00
Speaker
And they went there to build this colony, establish relationships with the native people. this Some of these groups were Sikatans, the Crotans, and the Algonquins. right And those relationships, they were some good, they were some bad, some were good that turned bad. There's a lot of drama that happened with the native peoples and this military colony. right Yeah. I mean, essentially the military colony ran out of supplies yeah and they, like you said, were in conflict with some of the natives. The natives were sitting there like, dudes, we can live here.
Challenges and Conflicts in Roanoke
00:39:32
Speaker
yeah We understand how to live off the land and you guys just simply can't. And they were trying to work with the natives to to help them and trade with them. And they did help. They did as much as they could. and But the the settlers were basically just helpless.
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah and like and i they told us during the tour that there was apparently like almost a gossipy moment where like one tribe is talking about another tribe and telling the colonists this and the colonists are telling it like yeah and there's all this hearsay and back and forth and then all of a sudden it gets to the point where the the colonists decide to attack a tribe that wasn't even planning on doing anything you know, bad to the settlers. So it just like the whole thing just got out of hand and there was bad relations and lack of trust and whatever. So anyway, at the end of all that, they had no supplies. They didn't have help from the native groups. And by 1586, they abandoned the fort and headed back to England.
00:40:25
Speaker
Incidentally, if you go to Fort Raleigh, and you don't read the signs very closely, and you take the little tour around, Ranger Dan did not tell us this, and I just happened to notice this on one of the signs, because we weren't really reading them either, because we were taking a guided tour. No, we were listening, yeah. But I happened to notice when we were standing in front of what looked like the remains of Fort Raleigh. It's like a mounded grass. Yeah, they made it look like almost excavated remains, like you would find something that was 200, 300 years old, right?
00:40:55
Speaker
but it's not, it's a recreation. right yeah yeah But they recreated it to look like the remains of something that had been uncovered. Which I appreciate from the the park service doing that. Yeah, I liked it. I don't care for it. But there's like a little footnote on one of the signs that said recreation. Yeah, I'm like, okay, thanks. I'm okay with it. I just wish they were a little more upfront with it. Yeah, the tour guide should have said that specifically. And maybe it's because we were kind of engaging with him and asking questions yeah and stuff. He he just forgot to mention it. I'm going to go with that. but I mean, we were pretty cool and he wanted to talk to us, so I get that. but yeah Anyway, so John White had headed back to England before the military sort of gave up and left. And his job when he went back was to put together a group of colonists with the AIM. And this is not a military colony this time. This is actual real people, real families that just want to settle in the new world. And the AIM was actually to settle in the Chesapeake Bay area. They had heard what went down with the military and they just kind of decided that Roanoke was no longer a good choice because of all the hostilities that were caused.
00:41:51
Speaker
there So yeah they're like, well, that's fine. Chesapeake looks amazing. Chesapeake is where Jamestown event you know eventually settled, right? That's the bay just yeah just north of there. So so anyway, the the goal was to go to Chesapeake.
00:42:03
Speaker
Well, and they were, they had gone to get supplies. Yeah. ah Yeah. Yeah. And they had intended to be back. I mean, they had to go all the way to England, but they hadn't intended to be gone all that long. I mean, the trip to England and back was what, nine months or something like that. If you just like to go there and get your shit and come back. Yeah. And like, it was supposed to be resupply for the military colony. There's a lot of things that was supposed to happen. And like, There were other ships coming through the Roanoke area that weren't associated with John White or Sir Walter Raleigh. And like I think the military colony hitched a ride with somebody at some point and was able to get Sir Francis Drake, I think, came through. And he's the one who ended up taking the military colony that back to England. So there was other people skipping through the area, other ships, that they were able to jump on and and get out of there.
00:42:50
Speaker
All right, so in 1587, John White got that group of colonists together. It was 117 people, including his pregnant daughter, which is important. And they set out for what they hoped was gonna be Chesapeake Bay.
00:43:03
Speaker
So they stopped at Croto and Island on the way to check in with the few men left behind at the military colony. But unfortunately, the ship they were on essentially forced the colonists on to land and left them there. Yeah. I guess they just decided they the ship decided it couldn't go to the Chesapeake Bay for some reason. Or there was a reason why they just they were like, yep, this is it. Full stop. like you Either get off here or you're going back to England. So yeah. So then they basically had no choice but to settle on Roanoke Island, and they reused the fort that they had left behind. Yeah, there was no reason not to reuse it, it was there. yeah And it wasn't like it was destroyed when they left it, so it was still standing. Yeah, and so with the help of a crotoan man, Mantayo, White and the colonists re-established good relationships with the tribes and and tried to make a go of it.
00:43:47
Speaker
Yeah. And this is the the kind of bright star of this story a little bit. So not long after they landed, the first child was born in the colonies and her name was Virginia Dare and she was born to White's very pregnant daughter who was on the ship, you know, from England. So yeah. Yeah. So if you've ever been out to the Outer Banks, Dare County is what Kill Devil Hills is in. That's where the, well, the supposed first flight of an airplane ever took place with the Wright brothers. It's actually Ohio, but North Carolina thinks it's here. No, it's North Carolina, but we're not rewriting that history. Thank you. So. Anyway, Dare County is that whole thing and that's named after Virginia Dare. And if you're watching the very terrible show Outer Banks from Netflix, like we are, They call the town, the area, Kildare, which is actually a combination of Port Manteau, if you will, of Kildare, Kill Devil Hills, and Dare County. So Kildare is a fictitious place. Yes, it is. But this is all from a baby born in 1587. Yeah, but the first baby born in the new world. It is, which is kind of crazy. The very first one. I mean, she doesn't make it for very long. If only she'd known that she'd be part of a Netflix show 400 years later.
00:44:59
Speaker
ah Okay, well, so the colony is settled in Roanoke, but they were kind of almost immediately in trouble. yeah They had no supplies. Relations with the native groups were shaky at best. and Because they were very needy. Yeah, I mean, they just needed help. And I think Mantello, who was the native guy who was kind of in good with the colonists, he was trying to help them as much as he could, you know, connecting them up with the other natives. And yeah they they did manage to establish some some relationships back to what they were before. Yeah, they were like, Matt, we just need some supplies. Right. But at the end of like a season there, they basically were like, like, this place is not working. Albemarle, the island, it's too sandy. We can't grow anything here. It's just not working. So they decided to move the colony 50 miles up the Albemarle Sound to a better location. But they really couldn't do that without more supplies and some help.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah. So the colony, thinking they needed help, no better person to send than the leader of your whole entire colony, but John White, they sent him back to England to plead for supplies and help in 1587. Yeah. And you remember the tour guide made it kind of sound like it was almost a mutiny. They were like, right you got us into this. You get us out of it. Get your ass back to England and fix it. Right. Yeah, so it was kind of a bad time to go though, yeah because as we mentioned, the Spanish and the English were not in good relations. And it just happened, the Spanish Armada was like, hey, then yeah yeah we're going to do this thing. yeah And the queen of Queen Elizabeth, Liz, if you will, had just said,
00:46:30
Speaker
Listen, any ship in this area, I don't care who you are or what you are, you're part of the Navy your navy now. yeah and You're going to help us defeat yeah the Spanish Armada. yeah and It was essentially three years before White was able to sail back to Roanoke with anything. yeah It's crazy, right? And there's also some bad luck with hurricanes in there, too, because we don't need to go into super detail there. But like the outer banks are very susceptible to hurricanes. They get hit by them all the time. And there was a ship that was sunk that had supplies you know because of a hurricane. yeah There was another one that happened that stopped John White from getting back there sooner. So like just keep in the back of your mind. Hurricanes are playing a big role, and they are wreaking havoc on the connection between the colonists and England.
00:47:11
Speaker
So you're very aware as a citizen of North Carolina, somebody who grew up here, of this lost colony and the fact that hurricanes affected their resupplies and all that stuff.
The Vanished Colony and Theories
00:47:22
Speaker
And yet literally two months ago, houses are falling into the sea because people built too close to the water because of hurricanes. They just always think that they can... beat the nature. They can fix it, they expect it, and they just plan to fix. It's so beautiful, it's worth it. There's probably 400-year-old descendants of Native Americans living inland going, I can told you so. What are you doing? What are you actually doing? That's why you build houses on stilts. Well, the houses on stilts are falling into the sea. Yeah, I know. If you don't know what I'm talking about, because I watch Weather Channel videos nightly, go look up houses on the Outer Banks falling into the sea, literally this summer, like three more fell in. Well, there was one a couple of years ago, remember, there was that one that was half washed away when we were staying at the Outer Banks. We were walking along the beach, and it was in a place where it shouldn't have been. It was clearly a very old house that was built way too close to the ocean. It was just like slowly washing into the sea. There's literally million dollar houses that fell over this summer. Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy. OK, well, back to the story. Anyway, when he got back, he looked for the colony, found no trace of the people. He went to the colony, found no trace of the people, no burials, no warfare signs, no anything. It was just like everybody picked up and left. Yeah. And the only thing he found carved into one of the posts near the entrance of the colony was the word croatone. Yeah. Indicating, because he did say, if you're going to go, tell me where you went. Yeah. So he just assumed they went to croatone. Well, they had a plan to meet Inland up at this new location, if they had to leave. But Croatoan indicates they went somewhere different, because Croatoan is an island in the Outer Banks. So it was confusing, I think, to him to get that message, which was directly opposite of what they had agreed before he left. But he was gone for three years. So like, you know, they got to do what they got to do.
00:49:07
Speaker
They didn't even know if he was coming back at that point. Exactly. I mean, passages across the Atlantic were were rough. They were long. Probably when he was gone a year, they were probably like, and okay they're probably still holding out hope because it could take that long. And they're like, yeah, but if he doesn't, we've got to make do. Yeah, exactly. so And so the the search party, you know, they went into the, the Palisade through the fence and all the houses had been dismantled, which yeah I thought was really interesting. It wasn't just that they abandoned and took all their stuff with them. They actually took apart the houses probably for the wood or whatever they were built with to reuse elsewhere. That's what that tells to me anyway. So they wanted to go build somewhere else.
00:49:44
Speaker
So issues with the boat that the search party arrived on came up and they had to return to England. So other than searching the the site of their their colony, there was no other real search efforts done, which always frustrated me because I'm like, if they had just popped over to Crotoan,
00:50:01
Speaker
Maybe they would have found somebody there who could tell them what had happened. yeah Or if they had gone up the Albemarle Sound a little bit, then they might have like found the colony there. But they didn't do any of those things. For whatever reason, something was wrong enough with the boat that they had to get out. Yeah. But also, like living there was really hard. And do you think they're like... Uh, I guess nobody's here. We should just go back to England where it's easy. Maybe the, maybe the other members of the search party, but John White was looking for his daughter and his granddaughter. Yeah. But back then too, you have like lots of them. No, he didn't though. He died. He went back to England and died alone and sad, but not ever knowing what happened to his family. He also didn't know that was going to happen either. wow Maybe he just assumed he would remarry. I don't know.
00:50:44
Speaker
no No, I disagree with everything about that. No, the captain of the ship was probably like, all right, well, they're not here, bye. But John White would not have done that. It sounds like he was like a a really a good guy who was just trying to like do right by the people. So that 15 minutes was all to just tell you to set up the story, the article we're reading right now.
00:51:04
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, we got to talk about the theories, right? There's a long episode, so let's just get into it. It's fine. Okay. So the traditional theory is that because they carved the word croatone into the fence, that meant they joined the croatan people and basically assimilated into that population. They carved a word into a fence. Like, why are you going to disagree with what that word says? Right. That's what it says. Maybe they should disagree with it.
00:51:27
Speaker
And there is further evidence of this, and it comes from later accounts in the 1600s from native Croatan people who remember family members in their tribe that had lighter colored eyes, lighter hair, and just had a more European appearance. And I think that some of these genetic characteristics carried into the population later on, too. Yeah. Was this the one, too, where people remembered that some some people in that area could like read from a book or something like that? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so these yeah these are like,
00:51:56
Speaker
coming from sources from the 1600s of people just talking about it. so Which wouldn't have been too uncommon necessarily. It doesn't mean it was these these colonists or settlers. It could have been somebody else. yeah There were people coming over, there were Spanish, there were other yes English people. It didn't have to be these settlers. Yeah, exactly. These were barrier islands. It's nice circumstantial evidence, but it's not like real true evidence. Yeah, it doesn't mean it was those guys.
00:52:18
Speaker
Okay, so here's the new theory, and this is what is supposedly like solving the mystery of Roanoke, this new theory, right? And it comes from the British Museum, and there's a map there, we talked about this earlier, that White had painted ah of Elizabethan-era United States.
00:52:33
Speaker
yeah And hidden in invisible ink, presumably to guard whatever was on the map from the Spanish, who might have captured the map. This is the plot of National Treasure 3. I know, right? So there's the outline of two forts. One was 50 miles west of Roanoke, where there was no fort that we knew of. But it was on that map in invisible ink. And this is the same distance away that the colonists had told White they planned to move.
00:53:00
Speaker
So he plotted on the map where they were planning on moving the colony. Yeah. A group from the first colony foundation, which is a bunch of people interested in this, explored the location, indicated on the map. And at two different sites, they found ceramic sherds from English pottery that dates to the time period of the colony. Yeah. And it's like, otherwise, why would those sherds be there, right? Why would those ceramics be there?
00:53:25
Speaker
Now, this pottery type also overlaps with the Jamestown colony that would have been just north of there, and they can't rule them out as the source of the pottery, right? Because Jamestown was not that much later. Yeah, exactly. What was it, 20 years later or something like that? Yeah, like 20, 30 years and in which isn't that ceramic yeah and ceramamic typology, that's not very much time. And also, I believe our tour guide told us that the military colony was sending expeditions out all over North Carolina. So I was also like, well, couldn't those church just be from a military expedition that set out and, you know, dropped a bunch of stuff. One of my favorite arguments about this not being Jamestown is that the lack of English pipes, because apparently the Jamestown people were like heavy smokers. I know. I kind of find that a dumb, that's dumb without reasoning, but like. But it also does make sense because maybe Jamestown was better supplied and they just didn't have any tobacco at the Roanoke colonies.
00:54:18
Speaker
They did not. They could have been heavy smokers, like a lot of English people probably were, but they just ran out of tobacco. But the absence of an artifact does not prove that it's not somebody, you know? But in this case it might, because you know those, so for those people that have never excavated this kind of thing before, your pipes, you have the actual pipe, which is really nice. It's like the kaolin, is it those kinds, those white ones? Well, hold on, though. Because you've got the actual, could have been ivory or bone, the actual pipe, right? Or it could be ceramic, right? But then the pipe stem is the thing that wears out, right? That it builds up with tar. And you can clean it out. But that's a piece that's usually replaced. Now, they could have found actual pipes, obviously, because people die and stuff like that. But the pipe stems is what you find all over the place. Right, because they get discarded. And if they found none of those, nobody was smoking. Yeah, nobody was smoking there. Right?
00:55:15
Speaker
So I guess, I mean, I guess it's okay. It's circumstantial. Again, more circumstantial evidence. But it's not terrible. But I mean, I do love that theory though. Like they had a map drawn by John Smith of where they were supposed to be. So like it does feel pretty good. The one detractor, one, one guy who was like, eh, you're not really into this theory was saying that these guys at the first colony foundation, they are seeking to prove a theory rather than disprove a theory. Oh, Charles Ewan. I've met him before I've talked to him. Oh, really? Okay. So yeah, he said that and it's like, that's not science. That's not how you do science. You disprove things, you don't prove them. He used to be president of the Society of Historical Archaeology. Yeah, so I do kind of understand that too. I do understand that, but like if you have a historical source from the time period pointing you in a certain direction, you do kind of have to go check that out and see what you find. And they found things. So I think they're going to need to find graves. And I don't know if they're going to find graves, but that's what they need to do is find graves or a town site or something to really prove that this is it. And if they don't find graves, actually, that kind of is somewhat proving the third theory is that they were killed or captured by native groups because they're not going to bury them. They're going to leave them scattered and then they're going to get eaten by animals. Yeah. Right. So it would have been native groups that were still hostile towards colonists because of issues with the military colony, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. But then again, why was the fort neatly abandoned with everything of value taken with them and not just looted or destroyed? But that's probably because they, they did abandon the fort, but then maybe wherever they were headed to, you know, they wandered into native territory or something like that. And then we're probably, you know, the natives were like, look at all that stuff they've got. These guys are a bunch of idiots. They're just wandering around. They're probably just hungry and starving. My guess is they probably left the fort with no food, no anything. And maybe even they probably tried to get something from a native group. We're well unequipped to do that. It might have gone bad. Yeah. Well, okay. So the fourth theory that, again, it's just so unlikely is that they tried to sail away and died.
00:57:16
Speaker
Well, I think that's too unlikely. Well, I mean, yeah, because they had small boats. They didn't have ocean seafaring boats. They had little pop around the sound kind of boats, because they took the big ones back to England. And they didn't have the Weather Channel app. That stuff pops up real quick. Right? Yeah. So it seems if they did try that, then they certainly would have died at sea. But it does seem a little bit unlikely that they would. Why would they have dismantled their houses?
00:57:41
Speaker
to go rebuild elsewhere, but then also sail away into the seaside. I don't know about that. And I think the sort of fifth theory that was mentioned in at least one of these articles was that they split up. Yeah. Some of them went to Crotoan and some of them went inland. And we'll just really never know the truth. Because there is pretty credible evidence on Crotoan that there were quote unquote white people there. And if there was a very small number of people that actually made it there,
00:58:09
Speaker
the archaeological evidence would be scant, right? And their buddy Manteo was Croatan. So he was clearly willing to smooth the path for the colonists in with the natives. So that does seem like a really likely theory. But this new theory is really good, too. There is a sixth theory. They were all abducted by aliens. And they're currently living their lives out. Why do you have to bring aliens into every episode? But it didn't have to be aliens. It could have been the Starship Enterprise. And they were like, these guys were abandoned by history anyway. So let's just take them and start up a new civilization on another planet in the 21st century. What is the first rule of Star Trek?
00:58:51
Speaker
ah the prime directive, aha but they know they knew that these guys were the lost colony already to history, so they just took them anyway since they were already dead. Oh, I see. Nobody knows where they're at. That still breaks the prime directive. No, that is the historic, it's part it's humans. There's no prime directive, right? So they took them anyway and took them to another place because, you know, why not? Okay, you're done. yeah That's what I would do if I were a time traveler. I would go to things I already know were historically out of the picture and just remove them from the table. Oh, if you're bringing time travel into it, sure. Well, obviously the enterprise came back in time. Oh, I didn't know the enterprise was time traveling. Well, they didn't exist in this century, so obviously. Of course. Well, anyway, that was ridiculous. I mentioned to the park ranger aliens right at the end, and he was like, hey, I'm not going to say no.
00:59:39
Speaker
To his credit. I hate aliens. I hate all alien theories. I can't handle them. see that They're too ridiculous. I mean, I like to make fun of it, but, you know, as a scientist, in ah in ah in an infinite universe, aliens exist. Oh, I hate infinite universe theories more than I hate aliens. Actually, I actually hate that more. Great. The universe is definitely infinite and other species exist. I hate it so much.
01:00:04
Speaker
Can we just live in the real world that we're in currently? Whether or not those species are sentient and can actually travel the universe is another question, but the universe is so big, the likelihood of them actually ever coming here is so remote. It's just, and the likelihood of them existing at the same time as us is actually remote as well. There could have been whole civilizations that could travel the universe that lived a billion years ago, and now they're dead. We just didn't sync up.
01:00:33
Speaker
Okay, you done? Okay, I'm done now. All right. So we're moving on from theory and just a little quick recap here, cause we kind of got off the rails there. We don't actually know what happened to the Roanoke colony still, but there is this new theory that is an interesting one and it is challenging the status quo of what we thought could have happened before. So I think we managed to solve zero mysteries in this podcast today. Yeah. Well, that's fine. Well, Yeah. All I know is the map that John White drew would probably tune on up real nicely. See you next week. Bye.
01:01:16
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.
01:01:39
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at w www.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.