Here There Be Dragons: Etiologies - Ep 87

This week, Anna and Amber talk about those pesky Big Questions: How are we here? Why are we here? Where do dragons come from? Turns out, people have been coming up with explanations, myths, and stories for questions like this since prehistory.

Links

• Here There Be Dragons: Etiologies

• Creation Stories from around the World: Encapsulations of some traditional stories explaining the origin of the Earth, its life, and its peoples

• The Origin of Dragons (Anthropos)

• Dragons: A Brief History of the Mythical, Fire-Breathing Beasts (LiveScience)

• Cyclops Myth Spurred by 'One-Eyed' Fossils? (National Geographic)

• 10 Mythological Perspectives On Menstruation (Listverse)

• Religion and Women (via Google Books)

• Menstruation (Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand 1868-1961)

• Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (via Google Books)

• Ancient mantis-man petroglyph discovered in Iran (Phys.org)

• Iconography of the Indus Unicorn: Origins and Legacy (Harappa.com)

• Now we know the reason for the narwhal's tusk (Mother Nature Network)

• The Travels of Marco Polo (Wikisource)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

Check Yourself Before You Shipwreck Yourself - Ep 86

Anna and Amber venture beneath the waves this week to bring you an episode about shipwrecks and underwater archaeology! We visit a few of the most famous ships in Davy Jones' Locker, Amber learns that underwater archaeology means more than "just pick it up from the bottom," and Anna dusts off that pirate accent.

Links

• The popular “pirate accent” is based on Robert Newton’s performance in the movie Treasure Island (The Vintage News)

• Underwater Archaeology (NOAA)

• More Than Just Archaeology Underwater (Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology)

• Uluburun Late Bronze Age Shipwreck Excavation (Institute of Nautical Archaeology)

• Queen Anne’s Revenge Project

• Archaeology of Titanic (Archaeology)

• RMS Titanic (Archaeology)

• Surveying the Titanic (Real Archaeology)

• Antikythera Shipwreck (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

• Ancient Skeleton Discovered on Antikythera Shipwreck (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

• Antikythera Shipwreck Yields New Cache of Treasures, Hints More May Be Buried at Site (Smithsonian)

• The Mary Rose: The Excavation and Raising of Henry VIII's Flagship

• Hatch, the Mary Rose dog

• Conservation of Cultural Materials from Underwater Sites (Archives and Museum Informatics)

• Conservation for Underwater Archaeology (tDAR)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

Green Sahara: The African Humid Period - Ep 85

The grass is always greener on the other side (of the Holocene). What is today a vast and inhospitable home to many people and creatures was, between ten and five thousand years ago, a lush environment replete with lakes, forests, and grasses. We examine the first clues that suggested a Green Sahara to researchers, explore the technologies and societies that lived there, and contemplate what the Sahara’s past might suggest about its future.

Links

• Megalakes in the Sahara? A Review (Quaternary Research)

• Saharan Dust Blows Across the Atlantic (NOAA)

• The emergence of pottery in Africa during the tenth millennium cal BC : new evidence from Ounjougou (Mali) (Antiquity)

• Ounjougou

• Technological and Cultural Change Among the Last Hunter-Gatherers of the Maghreb: The Capsian (10,000–6000 B.P.) (Journal of World Prehistory)

• Capsian (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology)

• The 8,000-year-old dugout canoe from Dufuna (NE Nigeria)

• Africa’s oldest boat set for exhibit in Nigeria (Africa Times)

• First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium BC (Nature)

• History of the Domestication of Cows and Yaks (ThoughtCo)

• Chad Genetic Diversity Reveals an African History Marked by Multiple Holocene Eurasian Migrations (American Journal of Human Genetics)

• End of the African Humid Period (NOAA)

• End of the African Humid Period (Nature)

• Climate Change in North Africa: The Past is Not the Future (Climatic Change)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

Book Club Bonanza - Ep 84

Settle into your comfiest chair for Book Club with Anna and Amber this week. We talk about our favorite books, movies, and TV shows with archaeological or anthropological themes! We've also got some tips for listeners on how to get your literary fix while you're sheltering in place.

Links

• 8 Home Library Apps to Keep Your Book Collection Organized (Book Riot)

• Thanks to Bookshop, There Is No Reason to Buy Books on Amazon Anymore (InsideHook)

• An Update From Emily Powell (Powell’s Books)

• National Emergency Library (Archive.gov)

• Crocodile on the Sandbank

• Lest Darkness Fall

• Motel of the Mysteries

• Compass

• The Last Neanderthal

• The English Patient

• Anil’s Ghost

• The Golden Goblet

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

A Giant April Fool's Episode

This year's April Fool's Day episode is on the biggest thing that never was: giants! Dive normal-sized-headfirst into conspiracy theories and hoaxes surrounding giants in the archaeological record, and meet some giants that didn't exist in Saudi Arabia, India, the Caucasus, and Appalachia.

Links

• Did the Smithsonian Destroy Thousands of Giant Human Skeletons? (Snopes)

• "Skeleton of Giant" Is Internet Photo Hoax (National Geographic)

• “Flashpoints & Giants” (Coast to Coast AM)

• Steve Quayle (RationalWiki)

• Giants and Bonus Potatoes (Knowledge Fight)

• Was 19th Century apewoman a yeti? 6ft 6in Russian serf who could outrun a horse was 'not human', according to DNA tests (Daily Mail)

• Scholars debunk myth of prehistoric giants in West Virginia (West Virginia Explorer)

• Giant Amerindians: Fact or Fantasy? (Southeastern Archaeology)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular