Radiolab - Detective Stories

Episode Date: September 10, 2007

Forensics, archeology, genealogy, and genetics are devoted to figuring out what really happened. In this hour of Radiolab, digging up the past leads to some very unexpected finds.

Do you want to get out? Is this us? Yeah, this is us. Okay. This is Radio Lab. I'm Jad Abumrod. Since our program today deals with stumbling upon the past in unlikely places, we thought we'd begin this part of the show.

Well, not at a place we normally visit. So, I feel like we're standing on the top of a mountain, but how high up are we? Right here, I believe we're about 180. This, by the way, is Chief Dennis Diggins. I'm an assistant chief in the New York City Department of Sanitation. And when he says 180, he means feet. About 180 feet high. Well, that's about 18 stories.

Correct. 18 stories up into the Staten Island sky. That's where we're standing. Where we're standing. A hill. Basically like a big dirt hill. And at a glance, you'd never know that this hill was made from anything other than dirt. What did this used to be?

Unless, of course, you dug about a few feet down. This is all garbage underneath us. Up until March of 2001, we were taking it. in all of New York City's garbage. All the boroughs were coming here. All the boroughs were coming here. So we were probably taking in on average 11,000 tons a day. 11,000 tons a day.

That's... What does 11,000 tons look like? That's a lot of garbage. Fresh kills used to be the biggest dump on the planet. But that's all in the past. With a little engineering help? It's going to be a great park. Absolutely.

This will be a park. And just look at how much property you have. All these mounds are getting wrapped and plastic. and covered with grass, and there'll be a restaurant. I can almost imagine that. Even a golf course. Yeah, I would love to be the first one to tee off on that. But underneath it all, the garbage will still be here.

50 years of trash waiting. Patiently. Until someone comes to look for it. And someone always does. I know years ago there was a... A garbage... An archa... How do I say it right?

Archaeological garbage man that came here and he did some core sampling. Meaning with a special tool, this guy bored a hole deep into the center of the mound. Actually came up with a hot dog landfill 10 years previously. Are you kidding me? Hot dog that was 10 years old and it was still a hot dog. Recognizable a hot dog. Recognizable a hot dog. That's amazing and disgusting.

I still like hot dogs, so I'll eat them. No, but seriously, do you ever consider the history that's contained in this big chunk of garbage? Oh, yeah. Well, this is one big time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. Time capsule. You can stop saying that now. Thank you. I'm Jad Aboumrod. I'm Robert Krollwich. This is Radio Lab, a series about science and discovery. And that is exactly what we have for you today.

Three detective stories. And each one begins with a rather peculiar clue. Clues that lead you back into the past. Time capsule. Time capsule. And now that we've got that phrase in our minds and garbage as well, let's go to a different part of the world and get things started for real to a different time also. 1898, Egypt, Oxirinkas Egypt. You with me? Where is Oxirincus Egypt?

Yeah, it's in the south, in the desert. South of Cairo, I think. And let me show you a picture. Okay. Do you see the desert? Oh, yeah, it's a big flat sort of sandy place. And who is this guy? Well, you should see two guys.

They're two Oxford archaeologists. Yeah, with a pith helmet and sort of standing high on a mound looking down. Yeah, one guy is on top of the mound and the other guy is toward the bottom. That's Grenfell and Hunt. Two Oxford archaeologists, they were in Egypt in 1898 looking for treasure, and they find those sand dunes. Which don't look quite like the other sand dunes, really. Yeah, they're sort of strange and irregularly shaped, which is why when they're in the sand dunes. they saw those sand dunes that you're looking at, they hired a team of workers, and they started

to dig. And they immediately began to find things. Huge quantity of pottery flows, shoes, baskets, rope. That's Dirk Obink, a scholar from Oxford. He tells the story of what they found. What they found was basically... The mother load. A huge circle of rubbish mounds, over 20 of them, that were completely undisturbed.

This was no paid-loat. little trash heap that was 50 years old like you might finance that in Staten Island. These mounds were really old. These were rubbish mounds that had built up over the course of 10 centuries. Ten centuries of trash.

That's a thousand years of trash. Yeah, and that included a lot of ancient paper. That's what they were really interested in. Any scraps or scrolls they could find. And one of the first ones that they pulled out of the ground was Lost Sane's of Jesus. What?

That was the first one that they pulled out of the ground. He who knows the all but fails to know himself lacks everything. If they say to you, whence have you come? Okay, forget the ten-year-old hot dog. Here, we have sayings of Jesus, which have not been seen, read, or even heard about for almost two thousand years. A long list of sayings that are not in the canonical. books of the Bible. He who seeks, let him not cease seeking until he finds. This is a different

Jesus than the one in the Bible. It's almost eastern in tone. He says, heaven is here. The kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth. It's all around us. And men do not see it. If we just opened our eyes. It's a papyrus that today is known as the logger fragment. And there it was buried in the trash. Wow. And he had Anyhow, the team pulled as much paper as they could from the mounds, separated out all the shoes and stuff, and just took the paper. And then they packed those up into hundreds of boxes and shipped them back here to Oxford.

This is the Sackler Library in Oxford. And we're still today, 1007 years later, we're going upstairs now. We're still today opening those boxes, pulling out the fragments, piecing them back together and deciphering them. This is what 2,000-year-old paper sounds like. It sounds just like paper.

And it looks like dried leaves. Not really much to look at or listen to, but knowing that it's 2,000 years old and theoretically could have been written on by Jesus himself. Well, it makes it a little more special, which is why we visited Oxford, England, where the dump now lives, packed away in 700 boxes.

This is a box that contains about 600 unpublished papery. Nick Gannis, one of the collections' curators, popped one open for us. I'm just opening an official document sometime early in the 4th century. Of course, it's full of holes, probably caused by little worms. And there's the sad part. There are enough secrets in these boxes to rewrite the past. The problem is... Much of this is even hopelessly fragmented.

reading it is almost impossible. Some of the smaller fragments, if you see lots of them, that look like a conglomeration of cornflakes, there will be a few hundred years before even the most substantial of these fragments come to light. We're talking about the reconstruction of works, the work on which is beyond the scale of a single human lifetime. Way beyond.

In the past 107 years, the Oxford team has worked, worked their way through a whopping 1% of the collection. It may take another 10 centuries to get through the rest. Here's how it usually goes. Nick scours the boxes each day, finds a new scrap. Tiny little scrap. Brings it into the lab for cleaning. What I do now is I remove some ancient mud with the help of a brush. Here he wipes ancient mud from a torn page of Homer's Iliol. After its mud-free, each piece is cataloged in the computer.

For various features like type of handwriting, size and style. And if the piece seems to match other pieces, Dirk and maybe a grad student, spread them all out on a long wooden table, and basically from there it's a classic jigsaw puzzle. How about this one? Doesn't it look like these might be the line beginnings of... They move one here. I think that looks like a promising that. See if the words match up.

Because they seem to line up pretty exactly with the... It may take five minutes, it may take five years, may take five lifetimes, but eventually they will have, well, not the whole story, not even a page of the whole story, but something. I've put the papyrus under an electronic microscope. Maybe just a few Greek words from the deep past. but I'm sorry

Eichrateronte but ten for me to not a truio Asa A melichon Aalphi A rest of her

Rassettos Endlis But we're missing a bit From the Upper right Corner Sometimes a sentence breaks off

Just when you need It to tell you What you need to know We have to be satisfied With knowing a little rather than a lot. Make sure I understand this. Is each of these fragments just a teeny,

like is it a 2B or? It's more like two. Oh, is that small? Some of them are tiny, tiny. I mean, there's about a half a million in total. Half a million. And they've only got through about 5,000. Well, is,

are you having your own list of things like a sort of favorite hits list? I do, I do. I've narrowed it down to my top three. Oh, okay. My top three ancient garbage greatest hits, if you will, which was difficult, but here's three that are really interesting. First, number three. Ancient garbage greatest hits number three. You, being a death metal fan,

I'm sure, are familiar with these three inauspicious numbers. Six, six, six, six. Absolutely. Six, six, sign of the beast. Right. Just to explain that the number of the beast six six six is what you use to either summon the beast or to keep the beast away because you can't say his name directly. That would be bad. All this comes from the New Testament. Okay. Derek showed me a piece of papyrus

that he found in the dump. It's about the size of your palm. So what are we looking at? This looks like there's maybe 30 letters. A copy of precisely that passage in the New Testament, where the number is stated. Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number.

its number is 666, 666, which was the traditional number of the bees. Now here's the thing, this little scrap of papyrus that Dirk turned up is the earliest known copy that we have of that passage. He showed me. Can you point to the letters again and show me what these three numbers? They're smack in the center of the papyrus. Three Greek letters, Kai, Yoda and Sigma. Kai Yoda, Sigma. Kai Yoda, Sigma.

Should say 666, right? Yeah. But in fact, Kai, Yoda, Sigma don't say 666. They don't? What do they say? 6.6. 1.6. No.

Instead of 666. Really? Yeah. Does that mean all the Bibles are wrong? Maybe. I mean, all we really know is that the number of the beast had versions. And that 616 may be the original. Wow.

How long does it take this to filter into the King James Bible or something like that? Oh, no, it will appear in the next standard edition of the New Testament in a note on that page, representing it as a viable variant that has now appeared in a papyrus text. What, do biblical scholars accept this? They do. Oh, so you should just probably be very careful about six blank six if you weren't worrying about the beast. Well, you should probably change your tattoo. Shh.

All right, let's move on to number two. Garbage Greatest Hits, number two. Hey, did you see the movie Troy? Yes. You remember the scene? Hector! Big, bold, muscular men fighting big, bold, muscular fights with big, bold, muscular enemies. Hector!

I know the film, and I know how big, bold, and muscular it was. Hector! What did your scrap tell you? Well, the papy folks recently, this is Big Big, news in the world of the papyrologists. They got their hands on this special camera. So we have this digital setup here, a camera on a sort of easel. This camera uses infrared filters to photograph text that's so faded that you can't really see it with the naked eye.

Take quite a long exposure. In any case, the first thing that they read with that camera is a poem about the Trojan War. A new poem of Archilicus. This poem. Argeon, effabesa, paloon, struton hoy de pebonto. Comes from the 600s. Not Homer. It's Archilicus's version.

No, it's precisely not Homer. Because whereas the Homeric version, the Brad Pitt version, it goes, you know, Greeks invade, Troy Falls, hurrah. This version goes Greeks invade, get their butts kicked, then run. Run like sissies. So it completely turns the Homeric account on its head. Wait, wait, wait, wait, so this guy, this was written at the same time as Homer? A little bit later, but in response to Homer. Oh.

And the Greek goes like this. Here, listen. One doesn't have to call it weakness and cowardice having to retreat. Note at trep. No, there does exist a proper time for flight. See, Homer's notion was that, like, the hero stands and fights to the end. But, but this poet was saying, you know, No. We ran away.

We turned our backs to flee quickly. And that's okay. He actually celebrated it as something that he was proud of because sometimes you had to turn and run. Running away is a good thing. Running away is a good thing. That's good one. See, what's interesting about the past you find in the trash is that it's messy. It's complicated.

There's not just a story you know, there's contradictions to that story. competing accounts of that story, which can be disconcerting. I mean, you know, who wants to have different Bibles floating around? That could be weird for people. But to me, to know that way back when, even then, there were different ideas about what it means to be a hero, that I find comforting. Which brings us to my first choice. And last, but hardly least. Ancient garbage, greatest hit number, well, the greatest hit.

What do you think people in the first century were really? reading. What do I think they were reading? What do you think they were really reading? Okay, when the when the text starts, she's saying, oh, I'm terribly on fire, and that goes in Greek, denos phlegomy, realm a.k. Diasse. The translation, uh-oh, it's thick and big as a roof beam. Oh, no, you can't. And then she goes on, Mene, Katamaker. porn, that's what they were reading. This filthy satire turned up enough times in this and other dumps for Dirk to suspect that it may have been a bestseller. So there was more than one version of this? It appeared over and over and over. I'm burning. I'm on fire. I'm terribly on fire. A stream runs over me. Do you understand? And I'm being bitten.

You're listening to Radio Lab. From New York Public Radio. WN.N.Y.C. And NPR. Wait, what? Keep listening. Okay. This is Radio Lab.

I'm Chad Abramrod. And I'm Robert Crilwich. Our show today is about finding clues to the past in the weirdest places. And there is no weirder place to find the past. Then in the story you're about to hear, comes to us from Laura Starchesky, who herself likes to. get into old things. My mom kind of fostered that. Like when we were little, one of our outings that we would do would be to go to this toxic dump near my house where I grew up.

It's like on top of a mountain. They sealed off this mountain and they made all the people move off of it. So you're just walking along a trail and then you see all these old abandoned houses full of stuff. So we would go into the houses and we'd find pay stubs, we'd find dishes, we'd find paintings and we'd try and figure out why. Like even though we knew, really why the people had left. We would try and make up other stories about why they left. Like maybe they were fighting in the middle of dinner and they just had to leave all of their dishes on the table. All right, fast forward many years. Laura's in New York. And one day she gets a call from her sister, who tells her, I just heard the most amazing story. I was at my writing class and the teacher told us this story.

You should call him. Eric Gordon is his name. Take your tape recorder over to his office in Manhattan. and make him tell it to you. So that's what she did. I just said at first, you know, I just want to record you telling the story. How is it going? How he had found all these letters and photos and created a character. I had no idea that I would become so involved. Okay.

So do you want to talk about that day that the story took place? Sure. That day. Let me see if I can put myself back in that day. So I was living in Oakland at the time. This is about 1994. And decided to go on a weekend camping trip with a friend. And we're driving south on Route 101 through the central part of the state.

And my friend starts to frantically shout, look, look, and she's pointing out to this field. She can't even get the words out. She's saying, look, look, and she's shouting. So he tries to look. I turn my head very quickly. And he can't see because his view is blocked by an overpass or a hill, and he just has no idea what she's talking about. And she is stuttering her words, and she says, there's, and she's still stuttering.

And she's like, there was a goat standing on a cow's back in that field. A what? A goat standing on top of a cow. A goat standing on top of a cow. Yeah. And, you know, of course, my reaction is, is, that's absurd. And she's saying, pull this truck over, pull over. And she's getting really angry.

And I said, I'm not backing up three quarters of a mile on 101. So they argue for a little. little while, and Eric finally relents. 20 minutes later, they arrive back at the field. So we pull over, and she just gets the hugest grin on her face. There is, in fact, a goat standing on a cow's back. Still there. We sit in the truck for a minute watching this cow, who's close enough to the fence,

that we've got a very good view of it. And every time he takes a step to graze, the goat kind of shifts from side to side, balancing. So they're kind of this unit. I mean, really amazing. You actually could see the goats, kind of bunch up in the cow's skin. And we get out of the truck.

They slowly get out of the truck to get a better look. And right as I shut the door. The goat jumps off. The goat jumps off. And we're just, you know, we're standing there kind of dumbfound, and we move up to the fence and just... Believe it or not, the story gets weirder. Really?

Yeah. So Eric and his friend are standing totally still hoping that if they just wait, maybe the goat will jump back onto the cow. And all of a sudden, Eric's friend notices something at her feet. She bends down and picks up a letter. A letter. Right in front of the fence. And it's old.

And it's kind of... Like 50 years old. Like a crisp brown. Then we looked at the postmark, and it was 1952. I'm open this thing up and read it, and it's almost about nothing. My dear, I wrote you a card after receiving the first one. Yeah, see, some of these are so tough to read. So I look down on the ground, and there's another letter.

I've been slowly getting on my feet again. And another. Ed is so much better. Looks like that's her loop to F. And another. Albertine sings very well indeed since you ask. They were blown literally in this line down the side of the highway. And we looked at each other and frantically started gathering these letters, filling our arms with them.

Letters from the 1920s, I see it, 1937 postmark. And then she shouts from a couple feet away, 1897, 1897. 1890s. I'm gathering, my arms are getting full. I run to the truck and grab a garbage bag, and I start filling it up. And then I start to notice, Ella Chase, Ella Chase, Ella Chase, Ella Chase. These letters are all written to the same woman. Over 300 letters, all written to one woman, Ella Chase.

You know, forget the goat and the cow. Now we're standing in the middle of somebody's whole life correspondence spread out on the side of Highway 101. And we just read. And we read and we read into the night. Let me see if I can find this really... So that day, back in 1994, began a 12-year obsession with Ella Chase. These letters are maybe Eric's favorite thing in the whole world.

He keeps them in this big archival box in his closet. Now, what's really interesting is there are a ton of letters that are written to her as mother or mom. And... The first thing Eric pulls out is this big stack of letters written to Ella during World War II. I probably have 40 letters from Boys in the Navy

to Ella Chase with that read by sensor stamp on the letter where they're calling her mom. I'll read you one, and this is one that I... April 2nd, 1941, from a GI named W. Murphy, and he writes, Well, Mom, I hope you don't mind me calling you this

because you were swirled to me and just a mother. to me and I hope I can be seeing you again. And keep writing to me, if you will. I sure enjoyed hearing from you. Hope you received the letter that I wrote a few days ago, but mail is a little slow going and coming out here. I'm feeling fine, only a little tired,

but that's nothing unusual as we are pretty busy all the time. Well, Ma, I better close and say a prayer for me, if you will, and God bless you. Love, W. Murphy. August 3rd, 1945. Somewhere. Dear Mom, were these her kids? No, they're not her kids. boys, 18, 20 years old, who were so attached to her just by writing to her that they started

to call her mom. And there were like 40 of these letters. And a number of them, from what I can tell in the letters, have never actually met her. So she became this matriarch to all of these men in the war. I had never seen anything like that before. Yeah, there's so much, something like this. I was just amazed by the reach of her personality. You know, he showed me dozens of letters thanking her. And you look at this. I am so very grateful. Thank you for what you did for my husband.

He is... Thank you for changing the way that I think about my life. Whoa. And these seem to be from people who had only met her once. Really? Yeah. The reverence, that people just speak to her. And, you know, I can't figure out when she was married. I can't figure out where she was married.

She ran for political office. I mean, this is a fascinating woman. She ran for political office in the 1940s, but I don't know what office. And that's where the story ends. That's where the story ends? Yeah. Eric has never tried to find out anything more.

Remember how I told he was a teacher before? Yeah? He started bringing all these letters into his classroom and ended up designing this whole curriculum around them. I collaborated with a history teacher. The kids would each get a photograph. They'd have to put it in a plastic. sleeve. Each one of the kids, whenever they handled them, had to put on surgical gloves. In history,

the students would research that time period, and then ultimately they'd bring that work back to my classroom, my English classroom, and they would start writing historical fiction. Eric would ask each student to create a ghost biography of Ella Chase. This woman's history. Using her letters as a springboard. And some of the, you know, some of the pieces were wonderful. He, just incredible. He even had them title their papers, my Ella. That's what's been much more meaningful to me. So the way Eric sees it, the real Ella was abandoned, and he's given her new life.

You know, I feel like a guardian of this person's moment on the earth. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this will take three-point announcement, four flight number 169 to San Jose, California. So here's the thing. I was already going to California to visit a friend, and I couldn't leave things the way they were. Like, the whole time when I would look at these letters and look at the pictures, I would feel like there's more here. And a flying time to San Jose will be approximately five hours and 56 minutes. How did someone who reached out to all these people end up with their life on the side of the highway?

I really wanted to know. Do you want to see some of this stuff because I brought it? Broughtson? I knew I'd need help. So I contacted this friend of a friend, Marina Cole. She's this amateur expert in genealogical research. And I showed her the letters. Wait, you had the letters? Did Derek give them to you? Yeah, even though he was convinced that they were abandoned. He told me, you know... I would love to find family that this would truly mean something to. Dear mom, it's... It's not her son. It's one of these letters from the... the World War II soldiers who all called her mom.

Oh, wow. As soon as I started showing Marina the letters, her face kind of lit up. Wow, she is amazing. The first thing we decided to do is to go to a historical society. This woman, and we know that she lived in Lomita Park. Since this is for Daily City, I assume... I went back and looked at census records to find out a little bit more about her. We found out that Ella had two granddaughter.

who were still alive, so we sent letters to her granddaughters, but they'd never respond. Day two. Stay straight to go onto Napa Valley Highway. My idea, my fantasy this whole time has been, we'll go to her house. The address that's on the letters. Oh, it's worth a shot.

Yeah, why not? Maybe bring one of the letters. It was a single-story house, Little Rose Garden. I think houses have a strong history. Someone there will be able to tell us something about her. Are they coming? I don't know. No answer.

So we try to neighbor. What is it you want? Hi, I'm sorry to bother you. I'm looking to find information about a woman to this house. I have no idea. We're new here and never. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Ugh. The missing husband?

I can't find anything on him at all. He's a complete mystery. I mean, there were a lot of unanswered questions. so we knew that we had to find Ellis obituary. Day three, the Napa Public Library. We're in front of the microfiche and we're scrolling through dates. It's August 22nd. This was kind of our last hope.

Look. The death notice comes up on the screen. Chase in Napa, Monday, July 4th, 1950. We scan it as fast as we can for any new names that we haven't seen before. Rexford C Green Millbrae Almost right away we notice Robert Liley That's a grandson

There was a grandson A grandson We had never seen this name before He was listed Hey this is Bob Down at the store Getting some milk or We don't know where I'm at

We're somewhere Bye Hi This is a message for Robert Liley My name is Laura Starcheski I'm a reporter And I'm doing a story about a woman who I believe is your grandmother.

Her name was Ella. I wanted to hear a voice. I wanted a voice. Marina returned to Los Altos to get back to her life. And I waited. One day passed. Then another. I didn't get a call back from him.

Day six. It was Marina. Marina? She hadn't been able to stop researching. In 1938, she filed for divorce. Uh-huh. And there's a series of articles where he denies that they were married. Really?

She pleaded with me to marry her. Ella did, but we couldn't get along, and I refused to do it. She was desperate for money. She needed to sell the house. She couldn't do that without divorcing her husband. Trial of sensational I'm not married case expected in June. It went on for like a year, the huge headlines. Ella said they were married.

Bellman, her husband, says that they never were. Ella couldn't produce a marriage certificate, and then finally the whole thing ended with her just sitting in the courtroom refusing to answer questions. Ella A Chase of Lomita Park, still adamant and defiant, but this time alone, steadfastly refused to answer questions. And then... And that really wasn't the word.

And then I found this really sad article from a few years later. Christmas, 1942, death took no holiday. On Christmas Eve, Bellman Chase wandered along, dimmed out south of Market. He had been drinking heavily. He was separated from his wife and family. Perhaps he was trying to erase thoughts that come to men at such times. Christmas Day sprawled on his back on his back on his called on his back on a sidewalk, he died.

The warm sun shone clear on the fractured nose and the blue bruise on his chin. Looks like the bum is dead, someone said. A couple days later, it says that his body was left unclaimed in the morgue. Really? And they were not able to locate his estranged wife. It suddenly made sense. It was right after that that she started writing

to World War II soldiers. She probably needed them as much as they needed her. Day 7. Holy Cross Cemetery in South San Francisco. Oh, look. Look, that's a nice headstone. It is a really nice headstone. It was gray and unpolished,

and she was buried with her mother and father. I wish I'd brought flowers. I know. I could go pick some flowers right over there. We could. Yeah, let's do that. Okay. Make sure your seat back.

The trains are in their upright and lock positions. As soon as I got back, I went to Eric's office. Hey. I had all these newspaper clippings in my bag, and I was ready to show him. How were you feeling at this point? I was feeling a little nervous. Yeah, some of it is kind of sad, and I just want to make sure that you're ready for that. It's not necessarily positive enlightenment about her family,

so let me get it out. As I'm taking the stuff out of my backpack, he stops me right before I hand it to him. There's a part of me that's not sure that I want to see it. I think if there's no one that would receive these artifacts ultimately or that would have some sort of connection and appreciation to them, I'm not sure I want to see it. Do you don't want to know any of it?

I don't. If there's no one to take them over, I want to live with them as a mystery. I couldn't blame Eric. I was even a little bit jealous of him at that point, because he got to choose whether or not to look at this stuff. So with that? I went home. But as soon as I got home, there was a message on my answering machine.

This message is for Laura. My name is Bob, grandson of Ella Chase, and he called and left a message for me to try and get a hold of you regarding some pictures and letters and stuff that was found along the roadside. I think I can help fill in a piece of the puzzle because they probably came out of my truck on the way from Santa Zay to Southern California. I have some pretty big news for you. As soon as I got home, after I talked to you on Friday, I got a message from Ella's grandson. He's the one who dropped the box. What? It was during the course of driving down Highway 101,

taking these boxes home in the back of my pickup, that several of them blew out. And he tried to pull over and get it. And I stopped alongside the road. My wife was with me, and we picked up everything we could see. But as soon as he started to collect it, the California Highway Patrol pulled over and told him that he had to keep going.

They were going to give me a ticket for littering. Because the stuff scattered everywhere. Because the stuff was just blowing everywhere. And he has a whole bunch of boxes, like the one that fell off. I'm still going through this stuff, and it's been 12, 13 years now. I love that. He actually found who dropped this stuff. Did he sound sad about it?

What was his reaction? He just seemed happy-go-lucky about it. He was like, I think I can solve your mystery because I dropped. When I was talking to Bob, I told him about Eric, of course, and I told him how much Eric cared about all this stuff. and he was really relieved. He didn't think it was weird at all. He just was glad that someone had cherished this stuff.

And he came up with the idea right away of sending Eric kind of a replacement. I have another group of pictures. Eric sent Bob all of Ella's stuff. Bob sent Eric this mystery box full of photos that he couldn't explain. I still can't get over the timing, though. Okay, so Bob passes by

And the truck, the box flies out And then what? Like a couple of hours later This goat jumps on a cow's back And causes these two people to stop and get the letters? Basically Do you think the goat on a cow Was a sign? What do you mean?

From Zeus Saying stop Eric, stop I think you could tell it that way But goats like to stand on top of cows Really? Yeah, goats like to stand on top of anything high If there's a fence, they'll jump on top of it.

If there's a house, they'll try and climb it. That's what goats do. Don't you think so? How do you know all this? I've seen goats, you know? My mom used to send me up the road to buy eggs from this woman who had all these goats. And they had a little goat shack. And all the goats would be clustered on top of the goat shack, although they had a whole yard full of scraggly grass to graze in.

Did you ever say to Eric? Eric, goats just kind of like to do this. No, I never said that, too. I mean, okay, goats like to stand on tall things, but since when does a cow not care? The goat's not extraordinary. It's the cow. It's a nonchalant cow. Yes.

Laura Starchesky is a producer. She lives in New York. A nonchalant cow. Well, I hope you'll stay with us. Our next detective story begins with a drop of blood, and from the blood we discover 16.5 million baby boys. This is Radio Lab. I'm Jad Abumrad. Robert Crulwich and I will continue in a moment. You're listening to Radio Lab.

From New York Public Radio. Public Radio WNYC. NPR. This is Radio Lab. I'm Jad Abumrad. And I'm Robert Crilwich. Today on our program, stories about stumbling onto the past and finding surprises. Strange things, which brings us to DNA. DNA is used to track crimes, this we know from police dramas like CSI. Far less glamorously, but no less interestingly, historians and geneticists

use DNA to go way back in time and answer basic questions about who we are and where we came from. And that is an unlikely development if you think about it. Yeah, because usually when, you know, if someone has sex with someone else, the DNA gets mixed. So the DNA is always changing from one generation to the next. If it's always getting jumbled up, one would think it would be hard to keep track of across time. Yeah. But, and here's what you need to

know for our next segment. There are patches of DNA which don't change. The Y chromosome is one of these places. This is the chromosome that men have, that women don't have. And when a father has a son, he gives his son an exact copy of his Y chromosome.

Sort of like a Xerox machine. Then when many years later, the boy has a boy of his own. Same thing happens. An exact copy of the Y. On and on and on, down the mail line. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Every so often, the cellular Xerox makes a mistake. A tiny mistake.

Sort of like at work, when you put the paper on the copier and the copy it spits back out at you, has a little smudge on it, a little speck. Maybe some dust got in there. Who knows? It's not a big deal. I mean, you can still read the text, but this new smudgy copy is, in its way, unique. It's no longer just a copy because it's got that speck on it.

This is where the analogy breaks down a bit, granted, because a paper with a speck is not a very interesting thing, but a Y chromosome with a mutation is useful, because geneticists can look at that little speck, that little mutation on the Y, and say, that right there, that came from one man, somewhere in time. It's a clue. And since they know that little mutation will get copied and copied and copied,

they know that everyone else who shows up with it is descended from that man. Now, this principle that a particular mutation on the Y chromosome comes from an individual back in time brings us to a story that I want to tell you. Once upon a time, a group of scientists led by this guy. Yeah, I am Spencer Wells. I'm a population geneticist. Got into a land rover and headed off to Asia on what they call a blood sampling tour. We set off in April of 1998 on a six-month odyssey.

And it was literally four guys. I wasn't just four guys. So my name is Tatiana Zeria. I'm an Italian researcher. Yeah, she flew over for about three weeks. I joined them in Tashkent. She came with us to Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan.

Taking samples in the Caucasus, the Altai Mountains. Driving all over Central Asia. Spending 10 hours in the car. We're going from place to place. Sleeping like in 10. And we sampled about a thousand people. It was really an adventure. So here's what they do.

Each village they'd come to, they'd find out who was in charge, and then they'd sit down with him or her. Describe the project in simple terms. Basically make sure that we had permission to do the sample. It's kind of an intimate thing they're asking for here, so they'd have to do a little wooing. Usually a beverage was served, not alcohol, not coffee. A kind of milk that comes from horses, but is it fermented milk.

They couldn't spill it out because they were offering it to me, and they were all smiling. So I really kind of swallowed it and went away before. So over this milky concoction, they'd say to the chief, okay, we're here to tell your story. The history of your people, your history of your people, your... family because by looking closely at the DNA in an ordinary blood sample, we can discover where your ancestors came from, where they went, who they conquered, who conquered them. And we can go back hundreds of generations. And typically most people would willingly give us blood samples.

What were they looking for exactly? Or I guess what did they expect to find? Well, this same group had done this in Europe, and when they did it in Europe, when they took blood from people, They found lots and lots of very distinct, separate families with very separate ancestors. That makes sense. That's what they were expecting to find in Asia, but that's not what they found. In any case, Spencer gives Tatiana a batch of the DNA samples.

Almost 2,000 samples. She goes back to her lab in London. And the goal, again, was very kind of open-ended. What are the genetic patterns in Central Asia? Tachana gets all her DNA, lays it out, and begins to investigate, and right away, something's a little odd. Very, very odd. I really thought we had made a mistake.

In sample after sample after sample, she could see a specific mutation. And we knew that everybody that present that mutation come from one individual sometimes in the past. Meaning all those modern Asian guys from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and Mongolia and China. People who came from very different ancient tribes and should have only the most distant family connections. weirdly, they shared a fairly recent great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandparent. No one ever seen anything like this before.

No, never. She asked for her boss to come in. I'm Chris Tyler Smith. And she showed him the data. As soon as we saw that, we knew that that couldn't happen by chance alone. So, the first thing she wanted to know was when did this mysterious person, when did he live? So using some statistical programs, she plugged the data into a computer program and asked it to count backwards to the first moment when the mutation appeared. And the program is saying roughly 1,000 years.

A thousand years ago, give or take 200 years, this person lived. Now, this is interesting. If you were alive a thousand years ago and you had a son and that son had a son and so forth, you would have right now about 800 living descendants. This person, whoever he was, has right now. Like 16 millions of men. 16 million descendants. Yeah, it's a lot. Yes, absolutely.

Now here's where it gets interesting. Tatiana got herself a map. Yeah, I had the map of the region and I spread on a map. The frequency of this lineage. She began putting pins wherever she saw heavy concentrations of the mutation. She put a pin in Mongolia. China. Siberia.

Siberia. Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan. Pakistan. Pakistan. And then she stood back and looked at this map. These pins spread all across Asia. And she thought, now, wait a second.

Suddenly I realized that the spread of this lineage was perfectly matching the spread of the Mongol Empire. As soon as she saw it, I went to Chris. Tatiana said to him, you know, Chris, I think I found Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan. Now that's pretty interesting. I knew just what I studied when I was at. high school, so I didn't really know much about it.

But she knew the basics. In the 13th century, Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia into a massive army, and they rode west. Literally killing thousands and thousands of men, so that means removing competitors. If you kill a man, you kill in a sense a chromosomal lineage. And then with all those men and their Y chromosomes out of the way, Genghis forced himself. I mean, he's the conqueror, so this is what he gets. The women having no choice in the matter, because that was his privilege in those days. He was the one picking up the youngest women

and keeping them for himself. Chingus undoubtedly had quite a number of sexual partners. We wanted to just be a little careful here, so we called up an expert. Yeah, my name is Morris Rossabi. A professor of Mongolian history from Columbia University and arranged for breakfast. Can I get a couple of scrambled eggs?

Yes. I have read accounts, and I don't know how really are, where the Mongols would come in, conquer a territory, and there was a Save the Pretty Ones for the boss kind of rule. Is that true at all? Yes, that's true. One story is that he was murdered by one of these women he had sex with,

that she placed a knife in her vagina, and as they were having sex, he was stabbed and killed. Whether that's true or not. That's an interesting story. Whatever. If Genghis did have the power to command any woman he wanted, and if the dates were right for history and the places were right geographically, all the evidence points in the same direction.

It looks like a duck and it walks like a duck. You know, the inference was that it was a duck. This was Genghis Khan's Y chromosome lineage. And so 23 scientists from all over the world together announced in the American Journal of Human Genetics that Genghis Khan was very probably the most successful biological father in human history. In human history. Yes.

In all of time. In all of time. And the thing about this story is it really, really, really, really, it caught people's attention. Because this is one of those things where you can actually do something about it. You can take, you know those DNA tests? Yes, I know the DNA test. The swab you rose cheeks, put it in a vial, send it back to these companies.

And they send you, they could tell you whether you have Gingas Khan's market. How much are these tests? How much? About, not my, well, I don't know. It depends. 300 bucks? 300 bucks? That's it?

Yeah. For 300 bucks, I can find out if I'm related to Genghis Khan. I bet I am. I bet you're not. Because his conquest routes ended, sort of near Lebanon, where my folks are from. I mean, come up. Look, it's suckers like you who were perfect marks for businesses like this. We found this restaurant in London.

Hello, welcome to Shish. How are you this evening? Called Shish. Called what? Shish. Yeah, Shish, because, for short, for Shish Gabab. They announced a major Genghis Khan promotion. Ten winners had DNA testing done. in Oxford to find out if they were ancestors of Genghis Khan.

This was very unique and the response was just... People came, came. Immense. There were lines around the block. The phones were ringing all day. I mean, I never thought there would have been that interest. You see, you weren't the only one. There were a lot of people working under strange illusions like you.

Let me ask you this, though. If I, let's say I had taken the test and came up positive, I am, so it seems related to Genghis Khan, Does that really mean anything definitively? I mean, is that marker for sure, Genghis Khan's marker? Do we know that? In fact? No. The only way you ever know for sure that it's anybody's mutation is you've got to go to the body, pluck some DNA from the body, see if it matches the mutation.

So you've got to find Genghis Khan's body. Yeah, that would be the ultimate proof. And by the way, there's a lot of people looking. Oh, my God. Oh. Found a human skull. Buried in the ground. I have been doing this now for going on to eight and a half years,

and we've dug up with some very nice fellas so far. That guy is Mori Kravitz. This voice, you hear, is a direct result of screaming. For years, he was a commodities trader in Chicago. Yeah, I was a warrior of the trading pits. He got just enough money. Actually, he made quite a bit of money, to sponsor annual summer trips looking for Genghis Khan's corpse.

Why is he looking for Genghis Khan? Valuable, great wealth. Because he knows that for all the sacking and pillaging that the Mongols did back in the 1200s. To this day, not one bejeweled dagger, not one necklace, not one diamond-studded tiara, which could be identified from the 13th century, has ever surfaced. Suggesting that it might be all under the surface of the ground somewhere? Suggesting that it all went south with the old man.

So there might be two treasures here. There's the physical treasure and the biological treasure. Well, that's for the scientist. I am a different sort of Genghis Khanman, but they're not going to be able to do a proper DNA search unless a guy like me finds the tomb. Moy says if there is a treasure, he will happily hand it over to the Mongolian government,

but officials are a little wary. So he continues to plead his case. And we excavate or can't we excavate? You must say. What do you mean? And he keeps digging up bodies. Always with the same result. Well, it's not Gingas Khan.

It's not Genghis Khan. The problem is nobody knows where Genghis Khan is buried. They don't even know if he was buried. They don't even know if there's any place or thing to find. It appears unlikely. Professor Rassavi says, No. Looking for Genghis is a, I don't know.

He died in 1227, and they had no tradition of tomb culture at that point. The body was just left where it lay. So does that mean we'll never know? There may be a way out of this. Genghis Khan, he had a grandson, Kubla Khan. The famous emperor of China, Kubla has the same exact mutation that his grandpa had. That's the nature of this. And I think the more likely discovery will be of Kubla Khan's, Joe.

Why not look for Kubla Khan? Where is Kubla Khan's body, would you guess? Well, we know. It's stated in the sources. There's somewhere in Armagedolia. When it is discovered, it'll be a real bonanza. So you talked to Moria, everyone. It seems to me you could go on the phone say, you idiot.

You're looking for the wrong guy. Well, wait. I'm going to cut you off. Morris Rossabi is going to say I'm looking for the wrong guy. You know, it's true. happens, that Kubla Khan is his pick. It's his pick because he wrote a book on

Kubla Khan. Okay, okay. The point is, both Genghis and Kubla Khan have the same genetic marker. So if you find either one, either one will do, pluck a hair from either guy's body, look up a DNA, and then you will know for sure

if Genghis and his family not only conquered the ancient world, but fathered the modern world. One day, we will know. And I guess the neat thing about all of these tales is, you know, you think when you're going to tell a story from the past that the sensible place to go is you go to the library,

you go to a fossil, you go to a ruin. But the truth is, you can go anywhere. The blood cursing through your veins tells you, I have a story for you. Same with a little bit of garbage that sits next to an ancient shoe. You pluck the piece of paper, and Jesus is talking to you, literally. There are clues about the past everywhere,

and if it's a knock on your door and you decide to open the door and take a look, who knows what you will find and who knows where you will go. By the way, the video clip used in that last segment was provided courtesy of A&E networks. And for more information on anything you heard this hour, visit our website, RadioLab.org. And communicate it with us while you're there. Here's our address. RadioLab at WNYC.org is our email address.

I'm Chad Abumrad. Robert Crulwich and I are signing off. Thanks for listening. Radio Lab is produced by Jake Abumrad and Helen Horn, with help from Sarah Pellegrini, Melissa Keevul, Miller, Amber Silley. Silley. How did you pronounce that one? Amber Silly, Kathy Edwards, and Jed Terres. And special thanks to Sali Hershey,

the New York Department of Sanitation and Chief Diggings, Nick Caboteche, Marina Cole, and to me, Tatiana Zeria. Production management by Michael Sessor Edyn Cappello. Radio Lab is produced by WNYC, New York Public Radio.

Bye-bye.