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Inbreeding Christians, Unreadable Text, and Boats Built in Plain Sight - Ep 278
2.5k Plays3 months ago
The first news story this week used DNA to find out some interesting things about some Christians in Spain. Not only were they inbreeding, likely to keep their faith and lines pure, but they had small pox and some other interesting characteristics. Next we learn about a small disc found on the island of Crete with an unreadable script on it. Finally, how did early Scandinavian’s build boats? Perhaps the evidence has always been there.
Links
- DNA reveals inbreeding, smallpox and violent ends among cave-dwelling Christians in medieval Spain
- Phaistos Disk: The Mystery of a Unique Script
- rabias_world1 (Instagram account with traditional Chinese methods Rachel mentioned)
- These Markers of Scandinavia’s Bronze Age Boatyards Were Hiding in Plain Sight
Contact
- Chris Webster [email protected]
- Rachel Roden [email protected] RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 278
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 278. That's when I say it. ah
00:00:24
Speaker
On today's show, we talk about cave-dwelling Christians, the mysterious face-dose disk, and Bronze Age Scandinavian boat building.
Relocation to South Jersey Shore
00:00:32
Speaker
Let's dig a little deeper and find ourselves a good quality host for this show. Why are you firing me again?
00:00:44
Speaker
All right, welcome to the archaeology show. You. Episode. 278. We already did the intro. I thought you always did the episode number. Well, I guess you don't.
00:00:56
Speaker
That's because you were trying to get me to do the intro, and I don't do it. No. All right. Since only that one person who hates us in reviews doesn't like to know where we're at, you can just advance 30, 60 seconds, maybe. I know. We don't have a lot to say this time, I don't think. I know. We just moved today to a new area. We don't really know anything about it, because I've never been here before, but we're in the Jersey Shore. Yeah, like way south Jersey Shore. Yeah, but now we're south of Atlantic City. Yeah, like almost Cape May, I think. What did I say the name of that city was? Sea Isle City? Sea Isle City is our closest little ocean point, so we're going to go explore that for dinner after this. So that's where we're at. Anyway, we've got a few news articles today, and that's what we're going to do.
Medieval Cave-Dwelling Christians in Spain
00:01:44
Speaker
So the first one is about inbreeding Christians.
00:01:47
Speaker
he help And cave dwellers. yeah Cave dwelling in breeding Christians. What else you do in a dark cave? Right. So this article was published in Live Science, and it is titled, DNA Reveals Inbreeding Smallpox and Violent Ends Among Cave-Dwelling Christians in Medieval Spain. Sounds like a party. It does indeed. I kind of felt like the violent ends piece of it was a little bit exaggerated after reading the article, but we'll we'll get to that. yeah The rest of it, though, is definitely true. Everybody back then had a violent end. Well, there were certainly a lot of them. Yeah.
00:02:23
Speaker
Okay, so we have a Christian community that lived in caves that were carved into a rocky outcrop in medieval Spain. And that in itself is pretty unique, but not completely unique because medieval cave communities can be found across the Iberian Peninsula in both Spain and Portugal in this time period. Yeah, and by the way, the pictures of this outcrop in these caves, just like from the what looked like drone shots yeah in the article, are super cool. Yeah, so cool. yeah You can see where they like literally carved out these entrance points into these caves. And yeah, I mean, why? Why would they do that? It's a very unconventional location, and why didn't they just live in a village like everybody else did? We don't really know the answer to that. There's not a documented reason for choosing a cave over you know village life.
00:03:10
Speaker
I mean, my guess is it was either easy to carve it out, maybe there's already sort of a semi-cave structure there and they just kind of augured it out of it, made it more homey, and it was easy to defend, maybe, you know true temperature controlled. yeah you know You don't have to go out and buy a bunch of, cut down a bunch of trees and yeah you know make yourself a structure. We were just talking today, I i want to live in a cave. I want to own a restaurant in a cave. You want to live in a silo if that's more well a little bit different than a cave.
00:03:40
Speaker
but I mean, kind of, it's a man-made cave. Well, yeah, it's the underground, yeah but yeah. Indeed. I'm not super interested in that idea. It seems like really dark and probably pretty cold. No, you make your own lights, then you make your own heat. You control your environment. I know, but it's always going to feel like a little bit artificial though.
00:04:00
Speaker
Well, depending on how you do it. Yeah. But I think with modern tools and things like that, it doesn't have to feel artificial. Yeah. But back then. It wouldn't have felt artificial back then. It just would have felt probably like a cold, damp cave would be my guess. And dark all the time. Dark, yeah. So it's got to be for like fortification reasons, like why else, right?
00:04:28
Speaker
So this study looks at the remains of the individuals that were buried in the cemetery that was associated with
DNA Analysis of Las Gobas Community
00:04:35
Speaker
this community. I think there was a church there as well. So we know they're Christian and they're all buried in this cemetery together. Yeah. They analyzed the DNA for ancestry of the community as well as relationships to each other and the diseases that that they had. So basically just trying to find out everything they could from the DNA. Yeah. Yeah, the settlement of Las Gobas occupied the caves from the mid-6th century to the 11th century CE. Yeah, and this is kind of an interesting time period and it could maybe explain a little bit why they chose to live in caves, but this would be after the fall of the Roman Empire, which was in 476 CE.
00:05:10
Speaker
And the Iberian Peninsula was under control of the Visigoths, who were from Northern Europe at that time. And then in 711 CE, the Visigoths fell to the invading Muslim armies from North Africa. So, you know, there's like a little bit of unrest going on here. Who's leaving this area? This is a rural area, like kind of far away from the city centers. So maybe it just felt safer to them to like move into a cave where they could protect themselves a little bit better. I could see that, and you know.
00:05:37
Speaker
It's funny how we talk about history, though, because we're like talking about these time periods that are 300 years they are very far apart from each other, and we're like talking about a people who are like, about that happened and then this happened. Maybe it would just be safer to be over here. But but in our defense, 711 CE would have been not too long after this community moved into the cave because I think it was mid 6th century, right?
Historical Context: Roman Empire and Visigoth Influence
00:06:02
Speaker
So that's kind of close. So maybe there's just some fear over these invading armies from North Africa and they just, you know, we're like, nope, don't trust us. Don't know what's going on. We need to go keep doing our Christian thing in a cave over here where nobody's going to bother us. yeah Just a theory because we still don't know. Right. Yeah, in the northern part of the peninsula, the Christian kingdoms continued and eventually reclaimed territory from the Africans. So, you got that. Yeah, Las Gobas is located in northern Spain in the Burgos province.
00:06:33
Speaker
And it's very far from the urban centers of Toledo, Grenada, and Cordoba, which is where we get most of our information about this time and place. And they are cities that were under the North African control for a little while, too, I believe. They're heavily influenced by the North African invasion, for sure. Was Toledo Christian at the time? I think so. Was it holy Toledo? Oh my God. Why? Why? Why do you do this to me? I was just wondering if it was holy or not holy. Why does this happen to me? Why is this my life?
00:07:06
Speaker
shilio holy ah but Was it in fact not holy? No. i ah Historically speaking. hu yeah I just don't know why. I'm going to go with no. okay So back to the cemetery, that's associated with Lasko Bus. We can tell that it was used continuously from the 7th to the 11th century. Holy Toledo.
00:07:29
Speaker
Nope. We're very far from Toledo here, like very, very far. And there were 42 individuals excavated from the cemetery and 39 of those had enough material that they could run genetic analysis on. Yeah. 33 had enough DNA for sex identification. So we know that 22 males existed and 11 females. So I'm wondering,
00:07:52
Speaker
They had enough remains to run genetic analysis through DNA, but they didn't have enough skeletal material to sex the individuals? I think that it's just not as good. Where did they get the genetic evidence? They just get it from hair, I wonder, maybe? Well, from the bones. You can get genetic material out of bones. I understand they got it out of the bones, but the bones weren't formed enough to sex the skeletons? So with my experience with sexiness skeleton, and I did do some of that in college, it was my focus, you need you need the pelvic bones, basically. yeah And if- None of the others are sexy enough. Well, the the jaw, or not the jaw, but the skull bones, some of the skull bones can be used, but they're not, it's not as good. The pelvis is really the best indicator. From what I remember from school, this is 20 years ago, almost at this point. yeah
00:08:44
Speaker
those are the best indicator and if you didn't have them or if they were degraded too much and you couldn't see the the different markers that you're looking for then you wouldn't be able to tell and even then it's only with like a low percentage of certainty because there can be male remains that present more female and vice versa because there are larger women it's mostly based on size like there's a lot of it space inside so larger women might present as male and vice versa and you just yeah how can you know so DNA is the you know the final word on sex for a skeleton for sure right so maybe they could a little bit but yeah they didn't have enough it probably would have been conclusive yeah and they're verifying with the DNA that's that will be my guess anyway yeah
00:09:26
Speaker
okay Well, of their ancestry, they found out they were overwhelmingly local Iberian. so Yeah, and I guess that was surprising, given how close they were to the northern edge of the North African invasion border, which I guess was called Al-Andalus. That's what they called that kind of northern boundary of as far as they reached anyway. yeah So you would think there would be some like mixing between the populations, but I guess you know they put themselves in a cave, so there wasn't so much mixing.
00:09:54
Speaker
And there was some evidence of violence in the early skeletons either, obviously not the genetic evidence, just to the skeletons. This is just visible evidence. Yeah, visible evidence. In fact, one guy took a sword to the head and apparently survived because there's evidence of healing. Yeah, that's crazy. But from what I read in the article, I didn't see any other violent episodes noted. Maybe there was some other stuff that they didn't really talk about, but it actually seems like it was kind of a peaceful community. And that was the one example of like kind of extreme violence. Like a sword to the head is kind of a lot. I guess he was saved by Jesus. Or cave life, I guess. Probably just backed into a sword. I mean, it's a cave. It was dark. He's like, ah, what are you doing? Wow. Sword down. I told you, always sword down. That would be a really sharp sword if you could do that to yourself. Well, somebody's just like walking through sword up. Well, yeah. Yeah. So the DNA also revealed inbreeding, which of course we know all about with the
00:10:57
Speaker
The what? you know How are you finishing that sentence? yeah who are you Who are you about to accuse of inbreeding right now? Of course not. I can't wait to hear. All about. Okay, we're not going to accuse anybody of inbreeding today. With cave peoples.
00:11:10
Speaker
Moving on from that. 61% of the and individuals with enough genetic material to test showed signs of inbreeding. yeah yeah That's a pretty big percentage. yeah so What happens in the dark stays in the dark. The authors suggest that they likely practice endogamy, which is basically marrying only within the community.
00:11:33
Speaker
Which is a pretty, actually, religious thing to do. It is. If you want to stay in the Christian community and there aren't any other Christians around. Right. What else are you going to do? You don't have a lot of choices. And you're like, well, cousin Tina over there is looking pretty Christian. And there's no other Christians. Oh, man.
00:11:53
Speaker
It could be too that there were other Christians around, but maybe this population developed like a very specific like brand of Christianity that they weren't willing to go outside of. Yeah. And it just didn't maybe spread to the other non-cave dwelling populations in the area as possible. I don't know how they would look for evidence of that, but I guess it could have happened. Right. and So in addition to the endogamy piece of this, they also tested the DNA of some of the earlier male remains and they found that those earliest males were actually close kin. And they're guessing that maybe this was like a patrilocal community or that this community
The Mysterious Phaistos Disc
00:12:31
Speaker
was started by a patrilocal group. And what that means is, is in a early Christian society, often the
00:12:40
Speaker
the males of the family would stay together and live in one household together and the wives would move in with them. So it's possible that like mother and father and then all their sons and all their sons wives, however many they had moved into this cave initially. And then the population grew from there and became what it was for, you know, 400 years that they lived in this cave. yeah So they just have a lot of similarities between the paternal DNA. Yeah.
00:13:06
Speaker
yeah And finally, they found evidence of smallpox, which was more similar actually to strains that came from Scandinavia, Russia, and Germany. So, yeah. Yeah, I guess that was interesting because past research indicated smallpox came to this area with the Muslim invaders, but this would be another route, or this represents another route for the disease to have entered the area. So don't always blame the Africans, I guess. All right, well that's enough Christian in Breeding for one segment. So now we're gonna go over to Crete and we're gonna learn a little bit about the Phaestos disc and an undecipherable script that we literally know nothing about. My favorite kind of archaeology. There you go, back in a minute.
00:13:53
Speaker
Welcome back to the archeology show, episode 278. And this is segment two. See, you do say the episode number. I guess you just say it in segment two. I do. But not in segment mill one. Because we literally just said it. Have you ever done the show before? I mean, I edit it every week. I just don't do that talking part, so. Incidentally, we're looking for a new co-host to the archeology show. Yeah, you did just try to fire yourself, but I wouldn't let you. Well, now I'm firing you, actually. No, you can't fire me. I'm the glue. Wow. Yes, you are stuck. No, so this one is from National Geographic. And this actually isn't, I mean, it's a news article, but it's not really news. It's just like interesting information because they're just somebody's decided to write about it because it's National Geographic and it's what they do. yeah So it's just kind of like educational, so to speak. There's no real new information. yeah But we're going to learn about something new, which you may know nothing about. Yeah, I love these articles because I hadn't heard of the face dose disc before and I think you had had I heard of it. I think I think you had because didn't they say it's in the it's in the Heraklion Museum, but we didn't go to the museum. We didn't have time when we were there. We saw that. I feel like I've seen it. We went to where I've heard about it. The palace at Nosos is the palace that we went to on Crete, but we didn't have time to go to the Heraklion Museum. Either way, it's not news to me. um And I think i I knew something about it. Anyway, point is, it's kind of a cool thing yeah because we still don't know anything about it. Yeah, it's very cool. And I do love when National Geographic or no, or one of these groups does a deep dive on a mysterious object like this yeah because it's kind of one of the fun parts about archaeology is sort of guessing what these things are were used for, what they will what they say, you know? Again, the archaeologists are guessing, but it's clearly a map to how to find dilithium crystals. Oh my god, get out. For your spaceship. OK, so in 1908, an Italian archaeologist excavating in Crete discovered this small clay disk bearing symbols written in an unknown script. Yep.
00:15:55
Speaker
And his name was Federico Halber. And his student, Luigi Pernier, and their team, they were excavating at the site of a Minoan palace at Faistos, which is why it's called the Faistos Disc. Yeah. Does every Italian excavation team have a Luigi on it or a Mario? Yeah, because they're super common names in Italy, not just in Nintendo games. Oh, OK. So I guess Japan wasn't just doing cultural appropriation. It's like totally real. No, like those are just common. Don't you remember the names of our office mates when we were in Italy, when we rented that office space? Do you remember their names? I really don't. I kind of forgot we had office mates. They were Mario and Luigi. That's hilarious. I completely forgot about that. I don't remember their last names. I just remember it being Mario and Luigi. That's when I changed my text sound.
00:16:40
Speaker
to Mario entering a tunnel in the old Nintendo game from back in the day. That's pretty funny. And that's still my text sound, almost 10 years later, so. Because it's funny, because I have, ah as an aside to our one hater, I have a client right now with my other job that I do that is Italian. And the the business is Italian. But there's like four or five people on the call every Monday that we do it.
00:17:06
Speaker
Not a single one of them, just named Mario or Luigi. Well, it can't be everybody. But I have three. I have a Marco, and three of them are named the same thing. What is it? I could totally forgot. It just totally escaped me. Antonio? No, it's not Antonio. I'll think of it later on. OK. Oh, Angelo. Angelo. Oh, you have three Angelos? You have three Angelos.
00:17:27
Speaker
but And a Marco. Okay. I can't remember the other guy because he never talks. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, but no Mario and no Luigi. Okay. Well, anyway, all that aside. Yes. Anyway, yes. In an underground deposit at the palace, they did find this brown clay disc and was covered in images on both sides and in a spiral shape. Yes. Yeah. And they call it the face toast disc because that's where it was found because people are not clever. No, but it is very distinctive, right? Yeah. So we don't know what these inscriptions mean, but we do know that it dates to 1800 to 1600 BCE. Yeah. And I think that was done with like either relative dating or others. The palace is a pretty well known date and those deposits were were pretty easy to date. So yeah.
00:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, the cool thing is this wasn't etched to using reeds or anything like that, like would have been done typically of those same kinds of symbols. It was pressed yeah like a like you would see in a ah printing press or something like that. yeah um And it was in pressed into wet clay using like a mold or something. Which is super interesting yeah because you have to have all these symbols. We'll get to how many of them there were, but made up already. yeah in in a So there's this Instagram page I like to follow, which is this girl who does basically ancient Chinese techniques. It's really cool.
00:18:46
Speaker
I might actually find it and link to it because there's a lot of crossover with archaeology because she's doing ancient techniques for things and what whatever thing. It's all kinds of things. It's dying. It's in one case she did printing and she literally was making the Chinese symbols, carving them into these little like I'm not sure what they were, but they were a little like dye-shaped cube things that she was carving the shape of the thing in. And then she used that to to print with ink onto paper, but you could do you could also press it into clay or something like that to make the impression of it. sure Anyway, so much work yeah went into that. So like where are the other things that they impressed using these these molds, right? yeah They, you don't make a full set of molds to communicate with and then not use them for other things. right So where are they? yeah i'm I'm so intrigued. I want to find more. I know. Yeah. The size of it was about, they said it was about Palm size, but a little bigger than Palm. a little bit bigger yeah Six and a half inches in diameter, about one and a half inches thick, but you could have held it in your hand relatively easily.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah, that leads to one theory by some people is that it was some kind of portable astronomical chart maybe because they could carry it around pretty easily with them. And I guess astronomy would be the type of thing that you might need a reference that you could carry easily. There's probably other things that you could you would need to carry around with you too in reference, but it could be some kind of reference like that. I know my one detractor to be an an astronomical chart is that typically you need those at night. And it's not like they had a flashlight. And you kind of destroy your eyes kind of trying to use ah some sort of a yeah some sort of a lantern or you know I guess torch or something like that you know or or some sort of of some a fire yeah to read this disc at night where you're trying to look at the stars. I mean, like, come on, seriously. that Actually, when you put it that way, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, I guess maybe. I know. And if the moon is out all bright, you kind of like destroyed all your stars anyway. So yeah. I don't know. I don't really buy it. Well, maybe one of these other theories is the right one. Yeah. So there's another one that it's maybe some kind of game, something along the lines of snakes and ladders, because the the images are in this spiral shape. So I guess you you could go in a certain direction, and maybe the things that you're landing on are telling you to do different different things. So I guess it's possible.
00:21:05
Speaker
Or, of course, ritual. ah Or, of course. No, we don't have ritual as an option. Well, it said a religious hymn, which is basically ritual. yeah Well, yes, it does say that, but there's a very specific reason why, which we'll talk about in a little bit. So, but yeah, religious hymn is another possibility. And then, of course, we have to talk about the ancient aliens theories. I mean, do we have to?
00:21:26
Speaker
It's just some people have said it could be mapped to Atlantis. or Or from Atlantis. Or from Atlantis. Or a map of the Minotaur's labyrinth. Anyway, the despair is an inscription consisting of 45 different figurative signs repeated in an organized sequence of 241 or 242 characters. One of them is actually not very clear. Legible. Yeah, more legible, so they're not really too too sure on that. Yeah, that's what I did. yeah confusion there. Right, but the rest are super clear and you can really tell what they are. um Humans, animals, plants, tools, um other obviously identifiable objects. yeah And those symbols are grouped into 61 boxes. There's 30 on one side and 31 on the other side and on both sides it's sort of that spiral shape where you could see it as starting in the middle and then spiraling out from there. yeah
00:22:18
Speaker
yeah The researchers believe they the signs are part of an Aegean-style syllabic writing system, similar to there was ah what was it, Minoan Linear A, or something like that? There's Linear A, there's also the Cretan script, which might have been a precursor to Linear A. yeah They're saying that these symbols are distinctly different from both of those. so it could have been sort of a branch that went off and then went in its own direction and then it was never really you know carried on and it just ended at some point as possible. But each group of symbols in in these boxes might represent a word or a couple words, a phrase, something like that. Again, they're not sure. They don't know. so yeah
00:22:59
Speaker
It's hard to say because you've got different language systems and writing systems that that do that kind of thing. When they first figured out and in Egyptian hieroglyphics that the all the symbols within a an oval shape or a cartouche represents the name of a pharaoh. right right That was huge. yeah like you know As soon as they knew that, they were like, oh, OK, well, once we figured that out, all of these are pharaohs. you know Now we just have to figure out these pharaoh names. yeah you know And then we can take all of these and just pull them all out, because we know all those are pharaohs. yeah you know And that was massive. Yeah, so definitely. yeah and And that's what they're going to need in order to decipher this, is some kind of like Rosetta Stone type of thing, where it puts it up against another language that we do know how to read. Because I ah i just can't see them being able to to decipher this. yeah
00:23:47
Speaker
But going back to the actual words themselves, or symbols, really, yeah if we assume that each box contains one word, and that's just an assumption, it could be wrong. But they did notice that many phrases begin or end with the same or similar words, just looking at the way the symbols are organized within the boxes, right?
00:24:10
Speaker
So many of the boxes on side A begin with the same signs. And when they begin with the same thing over and over and over again, that suggests like a repeated phrase potentially. Or maybe not each box, but like there'll be a series starting with one and then that sign again. So you could almost see it as like a phrase or something like that. Yeah.
00:24:32
Speaker
And then on side B, it's a slightly different thing going on. They're noticing these what they're calling phrases ending in the same or similar sign. So that would suggest rhyming potentially. But again, you're looking at all this with your own like framework of language in your mind. So I don't really know if you can make those assumptions.
00:24:54
Speaker
and they are They say pretty clearly in the article, it's just a guess. It's just a guess that they're just looking for patterns and noticing these things. Maybe it could mean this, but but the rhyming thing and the repetitive thing that's possibly happening is why they have suggested maybe a poem or a hymn or something religious because they do tend to have those rhyming phrases or repetitive phrases.
00:25:18
Speaker
at least they do now in our current religions that we know, you know, so like you have to step outside of your own context in order to like try and interpret these things, I guess. Clearly instructions for how to fire up your spaceship. i mean it could be Maybe not a spaceship. Definitely not a spaceship. Clearly instructions. Can we agree to not have ancient aliens in an episode? like Just once. Just one episode. like No aliens, please. All right. Segue, please. All right. so ah yeah So that's it for that segment. and We're going to move on now to Scandinavian Bronze Age bow yards that are apparently hiding in plain sight back in a minute.
00:26:03
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, episode 278. I do say the ah episode. Yeah, you do. I'm not crazy. But only on the second and third seconds. Yeah, that's the part I was apparently never paid attention to for 200 episodes or however long we've been doing this. Again, if you'd like to be a host of The Archaeology Show. Quit firing me. Right, Tristan At. Quit firing me on mic, on air. We are on air. You cannot fire me.
Scandinavian Boat Building Significance
00:26:31
Speaker
All right, so this article is from the Smithsonian, and it's called, These Markers of Scandinavia's Bronze Age Bow Yards Were Hiding in Plain Sight. Of course. Of course. Basically saying, archaeologists are idiots, and we're going to tell you why.
00:26:47
Speaker
I feel like they need to have words like might be hiding in plain sight or maybe markers because well we'll get to it but it's it's a big maybe for me personally. Well sure it's also an article that's letting you know that hey sometimes things get reevaluated in light of new evidence, or sometimes, hey, we learn new things, we see new things, and we go look at other things in a different light, or maybe it's just, maybe sometimes even new people come along. I'm not even saying that this has happened in this article, yeah but things get looked at differently and in different ways for different reasons all the time, and then you reevaluate what you know. Yeah, it's really important for archeology as a discipline to be comfortable with that re-evaluation because we do learn things and something that somebody analyzed 50 years ago could be totally different today or the methods are more advanced or whatever. So this is a less advancement in science thing and more of a just a, oh, it's like a light bulb moment. Like, oh, maybe these things that we thought were one thing are actually another thing. Yeah.
00:27:56
Speaker
so And that would be boat making. That's right. yeah So boats have always been important to the cultures of Scandinavia, even before the Vikings, the ones we know about. yeah Because you know they live on they live on the coast rocky coast land dotted with islands and fjords and stuff. yeah you know You just like to have a lot of water. i You need boats to get around. Exactly. And we know beyond just the logicalness of boating, there are tens of thousands of rock art depictions of prehistoric ships on the rocks in Scandinavia along the coastline, like all over the place. And there's an image, actually, at the very beginning of the article showing some of these really, really cool pictograph images of what are very clearly boats.
00:28:43
Speaker
Either that or they're really wide gnarly smiles. Maybe they're combs. They could be combs. Yeah, combs for those animals that I can see. ah Yes. Comb those animals. Maybe they're dinosaurs. No, they're not dinosaurs. That one does have a long neck though. It could be spaceships. We'll get that one over on the left side. That's like a giraffe. They didn't have giraffes in Scandinavia.
00:29:07
Speaker
It's definitely messy. Oh my gosh, okay. Well, anyway, rock art is really fun to look at because it's like what in the actual world was going on in the minds of these people when they made these images? We don't know. Right. But we do know that these are boats. Right. so yeah Well, we know that they had boats. We don't have a lot of evidence on how or where they were building them, at least in these early populations. We know a lot about Vikings, but like before that. Right, which is something archaeologists are always interested in. We we like to know the where's and the how's of things. We do like the where's the house, and the the when did they start, too? Oh yeah, the where's the house and the when's. The where's the house and the first. Yeah, the first. The first. Which this isn't about that, but that's just in general. right yeah So we already mentioned the Bronze Age, which we need to, of course, de define in this area, because as we've learned in this show, the Bronze Age is different everywhere, right? Yes, it is. So here, the in Scandinavia, the Bronze Age was from 2000 to 500 BCE, And there's evidence that long distance trade happened across the continent. Yeah, apparently they have evidence of artifacts from almost practically around the world, except for you know North America yeah in this time period. So they know that people were trading. yeah And given the distances, some of it must have happened via ship. yeah Because we have these images of ships on the rocks, and they're coming from very far away places. like Ships certainly had to have been involved at some point.
00:30:31
Speaker
But wood does not preserve well in wet environments, and this is a very wet environment. We have very little evidence of actual physical ships themselves that date to this time period. So researchers have started looking for evidence of shipbuilding instead, of course. Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker
One telltale sign is the existence of pits with evidence that people used fire to hollow out trees and expand the shape of wood, which is cool. Yeah, that's really cool. We were just watching that in the show we were watching last night. Oh, in Lord of the Rings. Oh my God. They were building ships in an episode on the new Lord of the Rings show. Yeah, but they weren't really doing that. No, but yeah, they were shaping wood. Yeah, they were shaping wood for sure. They were actually making rings. Well, but they were doing ships. Yeah, they were doing ships. Yeah, they were definitely making ships. Indigenous peoples of British Columbia in Canada and other parts of North America used fire pits for boat building, and those techniques are very well-documented. Yeah, even like two today, there's populations that still make boats in this manner. So we know how it was done from this like ethnographic evidence. And it sounds like they're kind of applying not that evidence itself, but like looking at those techniques and how they do them today and how that evidence would look in the archaeological record, basically.
00:31:49
Speaker
Michael Favell, an anthropological archaeologist at Lund University in Sweden, he says that early Scandinavians probably use some of these same techniques, which is why they're talking about looking for evidence that matches what they see in these North American communities.
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah, it turns out the coast of Scandinavia has tons of well-documented bronze pits. Yeah, yeah. They're everywhere. Well, sure. I mean, yeah and what did we think that they were using those fire pits for? Yeah, they thought they were cooking food in them. Cooking food. All those pits were all for cooking food. And maybe they did. They they may have. yeah You know, you could roast a lamb leg on one side of the pit and then, you know, fire the wood for your boat on the other side so that you can bend it into shape, right? Yeah.
00:32:35
Speaker
But it turns out a lot of these pits are on long beaches and would have been perfect for bow building. yeah So it turns out that's what they probably did. It's possible. just It's just like one thing you have to consider that these fire pits might have been used for, right?
00:32:50
Speaker
yeah And one of their things too is that if there is no evidence of food preparation around this fire pit, then it kind of would make sense to reclassify it as a boat building site. Because food preparation is messy. There's bone bits everywhere. There's you know the fatty fatty oils and stuff from the from the meat. like That's all going to be present in a fire. And you're going to be able to do the examination and find that stuff out. If you just have wood, I guess it could have been for warmth. They needed that too. but I don't know, fires were just more, and they had more uses than that, so it seems like like a good assumption that it would have been for another thing like boat building. Yeah, well along the same lines, if there's pits all over the rest of the world and they know you know north the Pacific Northwest and north in North America or the United States and then British Columbia in Canada,
00:33:43
Speaker
I mean, if there's other evidence along with those pits that they could look for, then if they're going to reclassify these, then yeah, they could look, try to look for other stuff now and go do some re-examination. Yeah. Cause there must be tools that are specific to boat building too. And while you might not have the, whatever wooden handles were on the tools, you would have the stone itself probably, right? It was the Bronze Age too. Oh, it was the Bronze Age. Yeah. So you might have some metal artifacts, which might fall apart in this like wet environment. Sure. But still. It's possible. Yeah, there could be some stuff around. Yeah, for sure. The other thing I remember too is that the populations in British Columbia would use steam to help bend the wood into the shape that they wanted in. So I could really see a shared fire situation with that because steam is boiled water, right? So you could be literally like cooking a pot of food and using the steam from that pot to also bend wood at the same time. Like it really could be shared. They invented the sauna in Finland, too. Oh, they did. Yeah. So all over Scandinavia, I'm sure that technology was pretty common. So I don't know when they invented it, but they basically invented the sauna. They call it the sauna. The sauna. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it makes sense to kind of look at all these fire pits with an eye to boat building, too, or wood bending.
00:35:02
Speaker
Woodbenders. Yeah. Oh. Isn't that a? Well, you're learning. Are you going to watch Avatar so that you can actually know what you're talking about? No, I don't know what I'm talking about. It's not exactly a woodbender, but you know, I guess earth. Yeah. Okay. We're not going to get into it, but anyway, we'll go watch Last Airbender and then come back and talk about it. Actually, saying Bender one makes me want to watch Futurama, but that's what I prefer. Yeah. Well, you're old. That's your Genex-ness coming in. Come All right. Okay. All right. Well, we're going to go. Go out to the go see the ocean. Go out to the shore. Yeah. To the shore. To the shore and the boardwalk we go. Yep. All right. Yep. See you next week. Bye. Bye.
00:35:49
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:36:12
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster and Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.