Holding Out for a Hero(dotus) - Ep 138

It's Amber's birthday episode! Since she loves historiography, we're taking it back to one of the earliest historians, Herodotus. How did he think about the past, and how did that influence historians who came after him? What did he get right, and what did he get wrong? What's up with that weird boat, those mummy enemas, the flying snakes, and the giant ants? Listen and find out!

Links

• Herodotus (World History Encyclopedia)

• Guide to the classics: The Histories, by Herodotus (The Conversation)

• Herodotus (Livius.org)

• Herodotus’ Histories (Livius.org)

• The Histories (Perseus)

• From Herodotus to H-Net on WorldCat

• 2,500 Years Ago, Herodotus Described a Weird Ship. Now, Archaeologists Have Found it. (LiveScience)

• 10 Historical Facts That Herodotus Got Hilariously Wrong (Listverse)

• Herodotus on the gold-digging "ants" (Livius.org)

• The Winged Snakes of Arabia and the Fossil Site of Makhtesh Ramon in the Negev (Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes, via JSTOR)

• Herodotus on the phoenix, on the horned serpent, and on winged snakes (Hyde and Rugg)

• DNA Boosts Herodotus’ Account of Etruscans as Migrants to Italy (The New York Times)

• Darius, Herodotus and the Scythians (British Museum Blog)

• The Real Amazons (New Yorker)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

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Prepare to Be Amaz(on)ed - Ep 137

We haven’t covered much archaeology from the Amazon Basin on the show, but this week, that changes! Instead of being the primitive groups early European explorers reported on, people lived in the Amazon Basin region for thousands of years by adapting to their landscape as well as modifying their environment to suit their needs! Somehow, we suspect that you, listeners, are not shocked.

Links

• Amazon People (World Wildlife Fund)

• People of the Amazon (Ascent of the Amazon)

• Who Lives in the Amazon? (Amazon Aid Foundation)

• The Archaeology of Anthropogenic Impacts on the Amazon (Harvard University)

• The legacy of 4,500 years of polyculture agroforestry in the eastern Amazon (Nature Plants)

• Archaeologists find vast network of Amazon villages laid out like clock faces (LiveScience)

• Ancient farmers transformed Amazon and left an enduring legacy on the rainforest (ScienceDaily)

• Archaeologists Discover Some of the Amazon’s Oldest Human Burials (Smithsonian)

• Persistent Early to Middle Holocene tropical foraging in southwestern Amazonia (Science Advances)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

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Mummies' Day - Ep 136

This week, Anna and Amber celebrate some of the lesser-known mummies of the world. Amber shares her hometown mummies, while Anna spins the stories of a smoke-dried philosopher, a legendary Lama, and...a winery? Plus, one Egyptian mummy thrown in for good measure.

Links

• Jeremy Bentham (Crime Museum)

• English Philosopher’s Dressed-Up Skeleton Goes on View in New Glass Display (Smithsonian)

• Jeremy Bentham's Auto-Icon (Atlas Obscura)

• Jeremy Bentham’s Head Is Coming Out of Its Box and Under the Microscope (Atlas Obscura)

• Nightmarish mummies attracting curious to rural Philippi (West Virginia Explorer)

• Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

• The Mystery Behind Russia's Buddhist "Miracle" (The Culture Trip)

• Ivolginsky Datsan (Atlas Obscura)

• Summum Pyramid (Atlas Obscura)

• First-known pregnant mummy discovered (Live Science)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

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That Good Old Copper Complex - Ep 135

We’ve been remiss in discussing the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) anywhere in the world, so we’re fixing that by spotlighting one particular technology in what is today the US states of Michigan and Wisconsin, and some of the world’s earliest coppersmiths. Plus, a very salty discussion of the pseudoscience and *bad* historical takes behind some alternative theories for the Old Copper Complex's creators.

Links

• Old Copper Culture (Milwaukee Public Museum)

• Ancient Native Americans were among the world’s first coppersmiths (Science)

• On the Timing of the Old Copper Complex in North America: A Comparison of Radiocarbon Dates From Different Archaeological Contexts (Radiocarbon)

• Miners Left a Pollution Trail in the Great Lakes 6000 Years Ago (Eos)

• Copper mining on Isle Royale 6500– 5400 years ago identified using sediment geochemistry from McCargoe Cove, Lake Superior (The Holocene, via ResearchGate)

• Mining on Minong: Copper Mining on Isle Royale (Michigan History)

• Understanding the copper heart of volcanoes: Scientists find link between volcanism and the formation of copper ore (Science Daily)

• How Cold Working Strengthens Metal (ThoughtCo)

• The exceptional abandonment of metal tools by North American hunter-gatherers, 3000 B.P. (Scientific Reports)

• An Exercise in Poo-Tility: Scientist Tries to Make a Knife Out of Poop (Mental Floss)

• Review: How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America (Journal of World History)

• Bronze Age Part II: The Case of the Missing Copper (Chapelboro.com)

• MacIntosh Stone - Nahma, Michigan (Michigan Back Roads - Oddities)

• Reviewing Gavin Menzies' "Atlantis" (Pt. 4) (Jason Colavito)

• The State of Our Knowledge About Ancient Copper Mining in Michigan (The Michigan Archaeologist)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

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All the Pretty Horses - Ep 134

This week, we've got one more past Patreon episode for you! Thank you all for your patience as we get back into the swing of things. We'll be back with your regularly scheduled new episodes in May. But for now, we're all horses, all the time. Amber gives you an unbridled (har!) look at the Hittite Horse Training Texts, which are much more than just Kikkuli (remember him?). After that, we veer from horsemanship to horse-man-’ship. First there’s a glimpse into the legal mind of the Hittites, and then some interesting commonalities across Indo-European societies and an overview of equine lives in antiquity. Ohhh neigh.

Links

• Kikkuli (International Museum of the Horse)

• Mitanni (Livius)

• These Asian hunter-gatherers may have been the first people to domesticate horses (Science)

• The Kikkuli Text. Hittite Training Instructions for Chariot Horses in the Second Half of the 2nd Millennium B.C. and Their Interdisciplinary Context

• Catalogue of Hittite Language (Konkordanz der heithitischen Keilschrifttafeln)

• Hittite Laws (Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor)

• Hittites, Horses, and Corpses (The Early Nature of the Bible)

• The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations

• Ancient origins of horsemanship (Equine Veterinary Journal)

• Horse Gear from Hasanlu (Expedition)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

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• Wildnote

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• Timeular