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Burial Artifacts, Pompeii Survivors, and Australia Migration Routes - TAS 267
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This week we look at 3 recent news stories. First up, the surprising contents of a burial found along the ancient silk road. Then, new research into what happened to the survivors of Pompeii. And finally, new evidence may disqualify on of the possbile migration paths that ancient humans took to Australia.
Links
- Archaeologists Found Stunning Treasure Buried by a Mysterious Forgotten Tribe
- Records of Pompeii’s survivors have been found – and archaeologists are starting to understand how they rebuilt their lives
- Early humans took northern route to Australia, cave find suggests
- Archaeologists Discover Clues to Ancient Migration Route That Brought Humans to Australia
- Sahul Subcontinent (Britannica)
Contact
- Chris Webster [email protected]
- Rachel Roden [email protected] RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
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.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to The Archaeology Show, Episode 267. On today's show, we talk about buried treasure, survivors of Pompeii, and human migration to Australia. Let's dig a little deeper and watch for those convicts. It's too deep. Australia. It's in the south.
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome to the shores of Lake Huron. I know, isn't it weird that it's like here on? Like, because... It's weird because it's alike? No, because we were just on Lake Michigan and we crossed a bridge. over water and it changed it to Lake Huron. Yes. It's crazy. I actually didn't even know that. I didn't either. Yeah, I was looking and I didn't realize that lower Michigan and upper Michigan were separated by two different lakes. Yeah. I mean, I kind of knew that when you just look at the map. Yeah. Crossing that bridge, the the the big the mighty Mac. the Yeah, the mighty Mac. Yeah. But in the span of less than three days, we've been on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron. Yeah.
00:01:17
Speaker
Pretty cool. yeah it's pretty neat It's a really gorgeous area up here. I think we're here a little early in the season. It's a little cold. Yeah. It's still pretty chilly, which we were trying to stay away from the heat. Like that's always our goal. But I think next time this area would be best experienced in like July, maybe. even still be too cold. It might still be. It's mid June. So for those who aren't familiar with the Michigan geography, I guess there's, you know, the Northern, Northern Michigan, the upper peninsula, and then there's Southern, which is like the mitten part of Michigan. And we are in the North tip of the mitten right now in Mackinac city. And we are hoping to visit Mackinac Island this weekend. So yeah
00:01:59
Speaker
That's where we're at and it's fun and it's really pretty and it's chilly. It's colder here than we thought it was going to be this time of year. Yeah, it's definitely colder. So anyway, I don't know. Let's talk about some archaeology. Yeah. So we got a ah news episode this week and since we featured listener stories last week, you and I kind of had a buildup of stuff that we wanted to talk about, I feel like. So we've got some good articles here. Yeah, this first one was found in Popular Mechanics, and it's called, Archaeologists Found Stunning Treasure Buried by a Mysterious Forgotten Tribe. Stunning is right. And why is Popular Mechanics publishing so much archaeology stuff?
00:02:40
Speaker
Have you noticed that? Listen, they're mechanics. They wanted to be popular for a reason. So they're just trying to cover as many topics as possible. I should have known you wouldn't actually try to answer that question. They're like, just working on cars is not making us popular enough. Wow. So we gotta try to talk about as many things uh-huh be as popular to as many people sure it is a good question though It's like will you stay in a lane? Yeah, you're just trying to get clicks now. So why are you even talking about this? It's true. It's true cuz it doesn't seem like there's a lot of crossover and readership here But yeah, either way, it's a great article. So yeah, we did sit in front of me right now True story and we're sending all of you to it. So enjoy Yeah. It's funny. You didn't think I would go this way, but I literally wrote the notes for this. And my first note was popular mechanics. Oh man. You set me up and you didn't even know it. I didn't even do that on purpose. I hadn't seen your notes. I should have known.
00:03:36
Speaker
Anyway, this article is about the Kanju people who lived in Central Asia from the 4th century BC until the 4th century CE, and that's what's now known as Southern Kazakhstan. yeah And despite them living 800 years generally in this area, we don't know a whole lot about them. Yeah, we do know that they had Indo-European origins and spoke in Eastern Iranian language. And like many people in this area of the world, they were semi-nomadic. And yeah, that's what we know about them. Yeah, that I mean, it doesn't go a whole lot more than that. yeah so
00:04:12
Speaker
Now we're learning more after the excavation of a 2,000-year-old set of burial mounds. They found, among other things, jewelry, arrowheads. They called them arrowheads. I don't really know if the article called them arrowheads or if they really were the heads of arrows. Yeah, I was trying to figure out like where this article originated from. Oh, there's a life science article. So. Well, that wouldn't be the. they No, it's not. the It does seem I'm getting press release vibes from this more than I'm getting like an actual study published thing, which of course is fine. We don't have any problem with that, obviously. But anyway.
00:04:49
Speaker
I will say a note on arrowheads one more time. yeah Arrowhead is generally a term given to the pointy shaped stones that people tend to find, but arrowhead, I don't know why. arrow head became the general word for these kinds of things when you could have called them spear points, you could have called them dart points, other things. But I guess arrows are just easier for people to understand. But the reason archaeologists call them projectile points is because unless you actually known they were hafted onto arrow shafts, again, there's three general things that could have been darts, arrows, and spears. right So you know those things.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, and also, unless you're an expert in lithic tool technology, there's any number of other things it could also be, too. Could be a drill. i could be Yeah, and scraper, even. I mean, all those are a little more obvious. But unless you're an expert, right? you know So sure that's why we sort of object to arrowhead as being a catch-all term. yeah But I understand why it happens, too. like It does invoke a very specific image in the minds of a person, so you know sure. They also found a large bronze mirror. But like I said, who knows what that means? Is it a kitchen? it Does it mean a stove? I mean, who knows? Terminology.
00:06:02
Speaker
I mean, I'm going to go with handheld because it was found in a grave. Probably they didn't like pull the mirror off the wall and like dump it in the grave, but it could have told you your greatest fantasy. If you looked into this mirror, who knows what kind of mirror it was. So we're bringing magic into it now. Okay. Got it. out So yes. Anyway, all of these things show the, some of the sophistication level of the country people. Yeah. So like we just listed out a bunch of artifacts, but the really interesting thing about these artifacts is where they come from yeah and the location of this area. It's at the heart of the ancient silk road. And so these artifacts and where they are from, they sort of reflect the impact of globalization in the ancient world because they were not from this place. They were from other places.
00:06:48
Speaker
No, they were, like I said, on the on the Silk Road. There was a lot of trade happening, yeah right? A lot of people passing back and forth and and just a lot of stuff happening. And the mirror itself was traced to the Han Dynasty craftsmen that reigned from about, the Han Dynasty reigned from about 206 BCE to 220 CE. And similar mirrors have been found with other civilizations along the Silk Road. So I guess they're just hocking these mirrors. I guess they knew it was something they could export and get whatever they wanted in return for it, probably. So if they were popular outside of their country, like why not use them for trade, right? I guess these mirrors were pretty pricey. Yeah. ah so And it was buried with a woman, apparently. Yeah. And they said that because this expensive, nice mirror was buried with a woman, it was likely somebody of considerable wealth or importance, which is a common archaeological thing to say. I just don't know. I don't know if I always buy that. But anyway.
00:07:39
Speaker
It's so hard for me to understand why a family, well, actually, maybe I'm answering my own question, but it's hard to understand why a family would bury a really important item, a really expensive item with with their dead rather than keeping it because it is so expensive. But I guess if you're really wealthy, You don't need to keep it because you can just buy another one. If your religion also believes that whatever you're buried with, you bring on into the afterlife and you don't want your, you don't want your relatives to be, you know, poor in the afterlife because you want them to be wealthy in the afterlife to have their things. Yeah, maybe they're going to be, they're going to be really mean to you as ghosts.
00:08:20
Speaker
I mean, that's like a real thing. Yeah. Like if that's, that's your religious tradition is to believe that. Yeah. It's not even a, I mean, I think they really are afraid of that. Yeah. My God, if we don't give like aunt Sylvia that mirror, she's going to really, she's going to come after you. Yeah. The lady's going to haunt you. She's going to be waiting for us and hit us with that, with that whip again. When we, when we get, when we die. Wasn't Sylvia your grandma's name? Is that why you picked that name? She was cool though. Oh, yeah. I thought she was a nice lady. How did you remember that? Oh man, okay. Anyway, the Kanju people also traded with the Roman and Kushan empires. The Kushan was a central Asian power to the south. Yeah. The burial mounds are in Turkestan and were excavated by experts and archeologists from the Oxbekeli-Zanabekov University. I meant to even leave myself a note to say, hey Rachel, why don't you take this next point? Well, you know what? I did and I feel like I did a pretty good job. So there yes, the Ox Beckley Zakkabakanov Houston University University We all go to use diversity Yes, those words are hard to say. Yeah, two of the mounts had already been plundered actually during medieval times But the third was seemingly untouched which makes me wonder
00:09:37
Speaker
Did they just like lose steam and be like, I've already done two mounds. I don't want to do another one. Or that was the third one just harder to see? Probably curious. They probably were looking and just didn't find anything else and moved on. I think looting is sort of a, looting's hard. It's hard and you do it at night, like when you're not going to get caught and that kind of thing. So they probably just missed it. But yeah but I thought it was really cool that in this third untouched burial mound, they found ornate earrings, a belt buckle, and a Roman brooch. So we've got stuff from China on the one side and stuff from Rome on the other side. So you're showing trade back and forth in both directions. And I'm not saying that this person went to either of these places to get these things, just that
00:10:20
Speaker
People from both of these cultures are using the Silk Road to travel back and forth and trade, and it's just so cool to see two different sides of the world represented in one burial. Well, there's probably lots of cultures too when they're trading back and forth. Yeah, yeah. Like one item probably wasn't directly traded between the two. Right. It's probably hand, hand, hand. Yeah, yeah. Like that mirror didn't necessarily come from a Chinese person, but it came from somebody who was in contact with somebody who was in contact with somebody or whatever, you know? Yeah. And yet, no silk. Crazy. It's a silk rope. Yeah. Where the hell's the silk? Yeah. Where is it? Show me the silk. Uh-huh. Yeah. No, silk wouldn't have made it. No. It would, that missing majority right there for sure. You're going to get your metal artifacts for sure and maybe stone and maybe ceramic, but yeah, no silk. Sorry. Yeah, indeed.
00:11:11
Speaker
Everything here will be housed at the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and will eventually help bring more focus to these people because there's apparently some other things from these people and past excavations at that museum. okay yeah And everything we find just kind of adds another piece to the puzzle, which is exactly what archaeology is. It's what archaeology does. Yeah. Doing that good archaeology work. All right. well Another piece of the puzzle that we don't really have is what happened to the people who actually could run fast enough to not get burned by the volcano in Pompeii? Let's find out on the other side of the break. Welcome back to the archaeology show episode 267. And this article that you found actually is pretty cool because it talks about something that nobody ever talks about. Yeah. So we're talking about Pompeii, which I know we talk a lot about.
00:12:04
Speaker
But this is a slightly different take on it, so that's why it kind of grabbed my attention. All right, so Pompeii, we know what happened, right? 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupts, shoots ash and rock into the air, which rained down on Pompeii and Herculaneum, basically covering and burning those cities, destroying them effectively. Yeah, before we go too far, this article that we're linking to is from the conversation Records of Pompeii survivors have been found, and archaeologists are starting to understand how they rebuilt their lives. Mm-hmm. And the author of this article is interesting. We'll talk about him a little bit later, but Stephen L. Tuck is an actual archaeologist that wrote this, so not to a journalist this time around. I hope he goes into religion, becomes a monk. A friar. Oh, my God.
00:12:53
Speaker
Why? Why are you the way you are? Why do I have to live like this? Why don't I see these things before they happen to me? Then I'd be more prepared. Why don't you read that and see it a immediately? I don't know. Okay, moving on. So what we have, what we know about Pompeii, archaeologically speaking, you know, the story of Pompeii ends with the eruption that's right of Vesuvius, right? Like there's nothing else. You're just talking about a salvage operation at that point to recover what you can, archaeologically speaking.
00:13:29
Speaker
And today, archaeologists focus on uncovering the well-preserved remains because they give us a fantastic look into both the good and bad sides of life in a Roman port city. Will you quit giggling at yourself over there in your Friar Tuck joke? Because like I feel like you're not paying attention to me right now. I was just like, if journalism doesn't work out, he could find a job at, like, McDonald's. You know what he would do, right? He would work at French fries. Be the friar. Friar Tuck. I'm cutting all of this out, it's gone off the rails.
00:14:03
Speaker
ah Yeah, one misconception about Pompeii, because I'm going to be serious now, I don't know what you're doing, is that not everyone died in the eruption. Yeah, even that movie that came out a lot of years ago that was really super bad about Pompeii showed this mass death of everybody. Pompeii was a large and bustling city, and the quantity of human remains found does not match that size. There's approximately 30,000 people in Pompeii and 5,000 in Herculaneum, and they have found nowhere near that many bodies. so i mean it's just People escaped. They just did. To be fair, were like possibly a lot of them just like vaporized by a volcano?
00:14:48
Speaker
I don't think so. They were more buried. That's how you get like the, those like haunting like human shapes and stuff. Right. I hear you. I don't think there was too much vaporization. Maybe if there was fire involved, you know, like whatever burned, of course, like that you would get vaporization. But these people that were or buildings that were buried, that was a different story. But either way, it's not enough to account for all of those people. So, so a lot of them got out. Yeah, and there's more evidence than just the lack of human remains, too. There's stables that have no horses in them. There's ships that are missing from their docks. There's strong boxes that are empty of money and jewelry. All of these things indicate that there were people who got out, who took everything they could and got out. Let's talk about this, too. There's a lot of wealthy people that lived in Pompeii. Pompeii is a city as well. There's a lot of servants, there's a lot of slaves, there's a lot of wealthy people. You don't farm inside of Pompeii. You don't do a lot of stuff like that. In the normal day-to-day operation of Pompeii, people are out doing things and gathering stuff and gathering supplies. Now, this volcano had been erupting for a couple of days now, too. Yeah. So the big eruption that happened, people had possibly been getting out at the same time. So two things have probably been happening. A, people travel naturally and normally. So people may have just been out of town for the whole week to begin with. Sure. And also, people had a chance to leave. Yeah. It says here in the article, the eruption itself continued for over 18 hours. It's not like it surprised them. Yeah, it's not a surprise. You know some shit's going down when that starts. So yeah, for sure. A lot of people got out.
00:16:27
Speaker
Now, so I mentioned the article author, Steven Tuck, and he is actually a professor of classics at Miami University. And one of the things he's been doing, because this article is written from like the first person perspective. So he's the one who did all this research. He wanted to search for evidence of the survivors that were displaced after the eruption of Vesuvius. And he started with Roman records after the eruption and searched for Roman names that were unique to Pompeii, a couple of those being Numerius Papidius and Aulus Umbricus. You're getting all the names. Umbricus. Yeah, I know. There's the a lot lot of syllables in these these names. But anyway, that's what he did. He was just searching these records, these Roman records for these names to see where they went and what they did. yeah yeah And over the past eight years, he has scoured databases of Roman inscriptions and found evidence of over 200 survivors in 12 cities. Because if there's anything that we have in the historical record, it's Roman information. The Romans wrote everything down. They did. They inscribed everything. And we have an ungodly amount of information and databases about them. Like their tombs even. like Sometimes their tombs had a a full like life story on it. So like you know who they were and where they came from and everything. so
00:17:41
Speaker
But one of the things he noticed about the evidence of the survivors that he found is that they tended to stick close to Pompeii. They did not move very far away. And they also tended to cluster with other survivors. That makes sense. I mean, people want to stick close to home. I mean, they still have a lot of family and relatives there. I mean, you're not going to... It's not like you had a car, you know, you're not going to, right? Like, why would you go? to rome Why would you go all the way across, you know, the, the continent to resettle, you know? yeah And, you know, I was just listening to a book the other day and it was a book about somebody talking about the culture of Naples and Naples is obviously right next door. So I'm sure a lot of the people were very similar and even 2000 years ago, And I mean, it's a very a very family culture centered area, you know, and and it's just you're not going to go far. Yeah, you're just not going to go far. True. You're going to be near your family, near your extended family. And your extended family really is almost like your close family. you know Unlike some, you know, like, I don't know, I don't even really know my extended family that well. And that's just not and that's just unheard of in a place like that. so Yeah. Yeah, true. You know, my extended family is from Naples.
00:18:51
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. That makes a whole lot of sense. What are you saying? I'm saying you're destined for a compound. He had to come from a pretty big Italian American family. yeah But anyway, yeah. Okay. So some of the survivors thrived in their new communities. There was the Caltilius family. They settled in Ostia, which is a town, I think north of Pompeii. And they intermarried with another survivor family called the Munetiases. So that shows that these these survivors were kind of sticking together. yeah And they were quite wealthy and together they created, you know, this wealthy family complex thing. I don't know exactly what they did. They didn't say in the article, but they know for sure that they had a lot of money because they founded a temple to the Egyptian deity Serapis.
00:19:39
Speaker
And they also built these like huge, grand, expensive tombs for people in their family. So they were clearly thriving after the eruption. Well, I know what they did to become wealthy. Found it at a temple. But maybe... They made yield donations. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Religion was ah yeah a good... it It was a trade, right? It was an occupation back then as it is now. yeah And so then another guy from Pompeii, Alice Umbrichius, he was a merchant of garum, that's spelled G-A-R-U-M, which is a popular fermented fish sauce. And he and his family resettled in Putioli, or what's known as Pazuoli today. And he revived his garum trade when he and his family moved there. Nice. Yeah, and I guess they thrived too. So yay, yay for them.
00:20:27
Speaker
Apparently, not all the survivors thrived, which would make sense. yeah Some fell on hard times or were not wealthy to begin with and probably lost whatever they had due to the eruption. and Let's just put it all out there. There was probably a lot of PTSD, yeah but nobody knew what PTSD was until about 20 years ago. yeah and There was probably a lot of depression, probably a lot of just like really bad that couldn't sleep. Yeah. Like what are the chances that an entire family made it out alive? Maybe not good. They probably lost family members. They yeah lost friends, you know, acquaintances, everybody, everybody who was on Pompeii knew somebody who died for sure. So, you know, it was probably a rough time for them.
00:21:05
Speaker
So three of these, you know, poorer families, the Aviani, Atili, and Mazuri, they survived and settled in a community called Nuseria or Nusera today. And that is about 10 miles east of Pompeii. Yeah. The Mazuri family also took in a foster son named Avianius Felicio. The assumption here is he was orphaned by the eruption. Yeah, and they know this from his inscription on his tomb, I believe. But the interesting thing here is that this was really uncommon for the time because most orphan children would have gone to an extended family member. That's what the evidence is of this happening in other places. You know, orphan children happen all the time, right? Yeah, which makes sense culturally.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, they you go to a family member, but this is an unrelated family taking in this boy. And it shows that probably like there's this tight knit survivor community and they they took care of their own, you know, just one example of them sort of taking care of their own. And the government also stepped in to help in this situation too. So the Roman emperors invested heavily in rebuilding damaged properties and they also built new infrastructure that was kind of specifically for the displaced people in whatever communities they ended up living in. This included roads, water systems, amphitheaters, temples, you know, whatever you need as a community. You have it apart from the roads, the water systems, the amphitheaters, and the temples. The aqueducts. What else did the Romans do for that? Oh, it's a good day when that quote comes up. It must come up in every, every time. You didn't even do that on purpose. I didn't do it on purpose. In fact, I might have copied that directly out of the article. Oh my God.
00:22:46
Speaker
That's a good one. Go ahead, say your quote for the people that don't know. I never remember which movie it's in. It's from Life of Brian. I'm not going to say it. Life of Brian, okay. Anyway, the other things, there was also no evidence that they were treated like refugees and forced into camps or tent cities. Yeah, it seems like the communities, they welcome the survivors and help them rebuild their lives, you know, with resources, infrastructure, whatever. And I mean, honestly, it's only a good thing because they all like many of them became productive members of society. So it seems like, you know, come together and help your your fellow humans and they, you know, do better, right? Well, that tells me one of two things. Either A, yes, culturally speaking, people were taken in. you know that there's There's not a lot of evidence of, of like you said, these like like a tent city type thing of refugees. People were taken in. They were reintegrated. yeah you know we We just don't see a lot of evidence of it. It's hard to see. Or there just weren't as many as we thought there are.
00:23:46
Speaker
Survivors, you mean? Yeah. And we just haven't found all the evidence. I mean, there's still a lot of Pompeii that hasn't been excavated. I mean, I understand percentage wise we would see evidence of the deceased and we'd be able to extrapolate out and find those numbers, which I'm sure they have. Yeah. But yeah, it's interesting. It is interesting. Yeah. And and that's possible. Like maybe there is a refugee camp somewhere that has not been uncovered yet. And that is, it would be so hard and you'd have to have evidence of both Pompeii people and it being a refugee camp to begin with. So it's possible though. I'm playing pop hands in Herculaniacs. Yeah, I don't know. For me, I was like, there's got to be a lesson here for modern governments, though, in the way they treat refugees. Because if you provide the infrastructure to let people come in and join the community rather than keeping them apart or separate in a tent community or whatever,
00:24:39
Speaker
a ghetto even, then then you're you're helping people become productive members of society. It only lifts up the entire society together. So forcing people to stay separate and not really become you know integrated into the community, it seems ridiculous. And we should be better about that as humans and people. So there's my soapbox for the day, I guess. All right, well, on the other side of the break, we find out how early Homo sapiens sent their convicts to Australia. Back in a minute. Welcome back to episode 267 of The Archaeology Show. And as mentioned, we are talking about. Heading down on that. Heading down. Wow. Was that an accent? I don't know. I think I'm going to delete that. No. I don't think that's deleteable. Please don't let any of your friends make fun of me. Oh, they're going to. I want to hear it again. No. All right. So we've got a few links to this article in the show notes, but one of the big questions for Australia has always been when did people first get there? I always want to know when did people first get somewhere? Yeah. That's always the thing. Whether it's a Yelp review, who left the first one? Or who was the first one to get to North America? Who was the first person in Australia? It is funny how obsessed we are as people knowing this question. Yeah. Who was first? Who was first? Yeah. And I did not know this.
00:26:12
Speaker
The first humans to arrive in Australia is just as big of a question as when the first humans arrived in North America or the Americas. It's just much earlier. That's all. It's a lot it's a lot earlier than the American question. So yeah. Yeah. So there's some new evidence that Mike suggests that it's earlier than we thought. Of course, it's always earlier than we thought. yeah Well, not just earlier, but also like indicate which path they took, which is also interesting. yeah Yeah. Some of the evidence ... Well, let's let's get into it. Yeah, let's so get into it. This one article that we're talking about, we'll just mention one of them here. This is from Smithsonian Magazine, and it's, archeologists discover clues to ancient migration route that brought humans to Australia. yeah so
00:26:56
Speaker
And so archaeologists on the Southeast Asian island of Timor, so this is happening not even in Australia. It's on the island of Timor, which is informing how people got to Australia potentially. But they have found evidence of how Homo sapiens may have migrated. And this is happening in the Leila rock shelter in Timor-Leste, which is a country on the eastern side of the island. They found tens of thousands of artifacts deep inside the cave. Yes. Now, keep in mind, we're talking 44,000 years ago here, and that's by dating some of the artifacts that they've dated in the cave here through radiocarbon dating. And that's getting towards the limits of radiocarbon dating. It is, yeah. But some of the other things they did find were shells of snow crabs, ah barnacles, bones from birds, fish, lizard, snakes, frogs, bats. So they're eating a lot of stuff in there. Yeah. Also fragments of stone tools and some what they called grindstones. So just like, um
00:27:50
Speaker
you know things they were used to grinding things. Using for processing food, yeah basically. so yeah and Also, just while you're thinking about this whole time and why this could impact Australian migration is around this time, i mean this whole island chain and this area between Australia and Southeast Asia, Indonesia, all that, there was a lot more land there 44,000 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into that a little bit because I did not know anything about what the geography yeah of this area would have been 44,000 or more years ago. So we'll talk about that in a second. You're not thinking fifth dimensionally.
00:28:27
Speaker
I guess I'm not taking time into consideration. That's course dimensionally, I guess. Oh, yeah, that is. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's hard to conceive of because you do have to look at the islands to understand how humans got to Australia and other southern part of the world. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So these artifacts that they found were discovered on top of a layer of sediment that has zero evidence of human occupation. this is significant because they call this a sterile level and they're calling it the arrival signature. And because it's so sterile below this, they're saying that it's like a division between the before and after of human presence in this area. I mean, strictly speaking, it's the before and after presence in that cave. Yeah, I know that let be honest that was one of my criticisms. That was immediately one of my criticisms too, because you can't really apply it to the entire island, but you can apply it to the cave.
00:29:22
Speaker
I mean I have spent a lot of time in a town and like a year later found like the coolest coffee shop. Does that mean I never went to that town because I just found the coffee shop? and I don't know if that metaphor quite makes sense. But listen, it does make sense. Because if the cave entrance was obscured by vegetation and nobody just saw it, but they were living somewhere else and archaeologists just haven't found that habitation, is this yeah you know are we are we to assume that just because they were there, they would have naturally found this cave immediately the first time they got to the island? Yeah. I mean, sure, there there are people who are looking for a place to stay. And maybe they just like maybe they just naturally look for all the caves they could possibly find. Maybe that's an assumption that's being made. But I don't know.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, i I do agree with you. That was my immediate question, was like, how can they apply this to the entire island? And they're not really. like They are saying possible, probable. They're using all those right words that you use when you're just trying to rule out things. And so this is helping to narrow in on on a path. It makes it less likely that this was the path to Australia. And that the reason for that is because the sterile sediment, they also were able to date that. You can use radiocarbon dating for things that aren't related to people too. So they're able to date the things in that sediment and they range between 54,000 and 59,000 years ago. And that is important because there's no humans. Okay, so back up. There's no humans in this cave between 54,000 and 59,000 years ago, 5,000 years. That's a pretty big chunk of time, right? yeah However, there is evidence
00:30:54
Speaker
of humans in Australia earlier than all of that around 65,000 years ago. So what they're saying is that the people in this cave were not the first people to get to Australia. They probably did go to Australia eventually, but they weren't the first ones there because there were people in Australia 10,000 years before this cave was ever 20,000 years yeah before this cave was ever even occupied. So that's what they're trying to say here. And I think that is a fair statement, but you can't really apply it to the whole island or the route. You can only apply it to the people who were occupying this cave. And what they're saying too is with all of the lower
00:31:32
Speaker
sea levels. Australia at this time was part of what was called the Sahool paleo subcontinent. yeah um That also included Tasmania and New Guinea, right? Yeah. I had to look this up and we've got a link to this in the show notes because I was like, i don't okay, I'm American. I don't know where Tasmania is. I don't know where New Guinea is. Like all of that means nothing to me. So I really did have to go look this up. It's just holes in my knowledge. I've actually kind of for a long time been secretly fascinated with paleocontinental situations. Do you just like look them up randomly? You probably do. Yeah, I actually just recently read an article. There there was some recent research that actually just came out where these guys actually in, I think they're in Australia actually, they have some new evidence of
00:32:14
Speaker
an old and old continent and they know they know where it's at now because apparently trying to figure out where old continents are now is kind of a thing amongst paleogeologists. Because some of these old continents, they they're like, where's this old continent now? Because they can see this continental drift and they're like, oh, it's peeking up here in Italy. right like They can see this in the in these mountains and they they did they have these soil samples. matching up the stratigraphy from like around the world basically to see where it would have met up and created these continents. These continents are drifting underneath other continents yeah from a hundred, 300 million years ago and drifting up and blasting up as mountains in other places. It's just nuts how this stuff works. It seems like so right hard to figure that out. Well, people talk about, I mean, there's a lot of science fiction and stuff like that theories. And obviously when you're talking about evolution and all that other stuff and
00:33:07
Speaker
you know there's There's some people that think that, hey, it's possible that intelligent life evolved on this planet and other planets multiple times. It's just that the evidence of it is simply gone because of continental drift. you know It's completely been destroyed because of the cycle of life on a planet. You know what I mean? You'll you'll never see it again because it subsumed under miles of magma and and and now is a mountain and you'll never see it again. so Ancient aliens for me, I think. but it's not It's not saying that somebody else came to this planet. It's saying that this planet has been around for four billion years. That's a long freaking time. True. you know That's true. but Maybe not intelligent life, but life that we don't know. We'll go away from that subject. but Anyway, that's the whole thing. yeah so For those who are like me and don't know about geography,
00:33:59
Speaker
Because I'm not very good with it. Sorry, Australians yeah and everybody around you. I know. Well, it's true for it any part of the world. We're just talking about Australia right now. But so Tasmania is kind of on the southern eastern side of Australia off the coast. And the New Guinea is on the northern kind of eastern side of Australia, also off the coast. So those sort of fuse together to make a whole. And then the whole thing and just is sort of more north than it is now. And all of the islands in that area are much closer together. There's less land separating them. It's much easier for these people to go between these islands. yeah So that's the area we're talking about.
00:34:36
Speaker
and That's why they're looking at these different paths to see how they would have gotten to Australia. And this Timor idea was was one of them, but it's this is evidence that maybe it's not the path that the first people used to get to Australia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The other hypothesis is through the islands of Sulawesi to the north. And that hypothesis still seems to be going strong. There's no evidence supporting it. And with this doubt thrown on the Timor one, it kind of seems like it's more probably probable. But like you said, this is one cave in one spot on the island that doesn't support the Timor hypothesis. But that doesn't mean that there isn't another cave in some other part that might support it. So I think probably, as we always say, more research needs to be done.
00:35:23
Speaker
Either way, this cave of criminals, I don't know what they were doing there. But they were trying to figure out what to do with them. And they're like, you know what? and Chuck them to the south. Wow. Yeah. 44,000 years ago, huh? Yeah. You think that's how they dealt with their criminals? That's how they dealt with them. Uh-huh. OK. Yeah. No, that's just- They fed them shellfish. White people in England that did that. Oh, yeah. That's true. No, they fed them shellfish and said, you're going south, buddy. I don't know how you're going to get there. Uh-huh. But I see some land coming out of the sea. OK. Let's do it before this continent ends up in, you know. This continent has gone adrift, so. Wow. You. And the mom jokes. Neither of us are parents. I don't think that counts. How could I make dad jokes then? All right. Yeah. Well, I think that's enough for now. I don't know how you do make dad jokes, though. It's not possible. But you do. Yeah. All right. I was in the Navy. All right. With that, we will.
00:36:20
Speaker
All for this week. Wow. We are on our third great lake in three weeks. We are. Yeah. We've got a lot of water in our lives right now. We do. We do. And we went on Lake Michigan last week and now we're going to go on Lake Huron this week. Wow. We went on Lake Superior last week. Lake Superior. That's right. We did. We didn't go on Lake Michigan. I stepped into Lake Michigan. You did. With my toes. Yes, you did. Yep. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yep. Yeah. We're going to... Mmm... Mackinac Island. Mackinac Island. Why is it Mackinac Island, but we're in Mackinaw City? I don't know. They wanted to make it confusing for us. Why is there a Mackinac and Mackinaw's over here? Yeah, we're in the Mack Place. The Mack Place in Michigan. I know. It's all Native American place names, I'm sure. Yeah, there's a lot of...
00:37:02
Speaker
There's a jib away around here. I know that. But I can't remember some of the other some of their travel affiliations. But that's where a lot of the names come from. I grew up in a place like that. Like, I grew up in a place called Snohomish. Yeah. Snoqualmie. Yeah. And Stiligwamish. Yeah. You know, so I should be used to those kinds of words. You really should. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we'll see you next week. OK, bye.
00:37:27
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment in and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening, and have an awesome day.
00:37:50
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.