SciShow Tangents - Trick or Treat Month: Tombs with Siobhan Thompson!

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Trick or Treat Month returns... and this time it's personal! Join us for another month of spooky themes and special surprise guest apparitions! Try not to get too scared!This year's ghastly Grand Guignol of science and screams begins at the end: the tomb! And we dug up an old friend, Dimension 20's Siobhan Thompson, to guide us deep into the cursed catacombs of knowledge! SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Glenn Trewitt for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the frightly competitive science knowledge screamcase! I'm your ghost hank gangrene and joining me this week as always is mad scientist scary riley boo and our resident every wolf man sam skulls hello good job buddy the old calendar on the wall says it's halloween time once more and as you know we here at size show you, you may not though, but this is a thing. We here at SciShow Tangents love to get into that Halloween spirit. And this year is no different. October will be trick or treat month. And Sam and Sari have invited some ghoulish guests to SciShow Tangents Manor to join us this month. In fact, I hear one of them approaching now. Ooh! It's me! A spooky ghost!

It's a comedian and writer and Dimension 20 player, Siobhan Thompson. Hello! It's so good to see you again. Thank you. It's so good to see you too, my friend. You're looking entirely different from the last time I saw you. It's so good to see you too, my friend. You're looking entirely different from the last time I saw you. What happened? I moved all the hair from the top of the head to the

bottom part of the head. Very cool. That's the thing that all men have to go through at a certain age, I feel like. You just hurried on the system a little bit earlier than perhaps. So Siobhan and I actually played a game together. It was called Mentopolis. And it's a series, a season, I guess, of Dimension 20. A series, if you're British, which you are. Yes, I am. And you can see it on Dropout TV and one episode on YouTube. Sorry that there's a paywall for the rest of them. Siobhan, you play a lot of games.

You play a lot of tabletop games specifically, professionally. What's the best game I can play that doesn't require me to buy anything that I don't already own? It depends, I guess, on if you're playing on your own or you're playing with other people. No, I got friends. What do you think I am? Okay, great. Then I love a silly

little gambling game. Any kind of silly little gambling game is fun to me, especially one that has almost no stakes. One of my favorite things to do at university, we play a lot of drinking games at uni because A, you can drink legally in England, but B, also the culture in England is when you're done for the day, you go to the pub and you go to the pub and you just sit with your friends for eight hours until they kick you out play silly little gambling games yes exactly um so we used to play a game called 21 which is so stupid perfect for drinking because it gets you very drunk but also tests your memory drunker you get the drunker you get. It's one of those.

Exactly. It starts off very simple. It's called 21. You just count around the table to 21. And then the person that hits 21 drinks and makes up a rule. So instead of saying the number five, you have to get up on the table and pluck like a chicken. You could also say, instead of saying the number five, you have to get up on the table and pluck like a chicken. You could also say, instead of saying the number five, you have to say the number six.

So you would go one, two, three, four, six, six. And if you mess it up, you have to drink and then start again. And then every time anybody gets to the number 21, you get to make a new rule. I love it so much.

We have a happy hour after this recording because we have a new employee who's coming to visit. And so we should go to Cranky Sam's and play 21 in Siobhan's honor and get me the drunkest I've been since I got cancer. Hell yeah. I don't like games where you have to make a spectacle of yourself because I feel like I'm going to bother other people, you know? I'm fine making a spectacle of myself. But if I feel like I'm intruding on other people's ability to'm fine making a spectacle of myself but if i feel like i'm intruding on other people's ability to just have a nice evening then i can't anymore i mean you don't have to it's also the nice thing about it is it's set up so that if the people you

are playing with are not the type of people who will happily in a bar stand up on a table and look like a chicken you can just make the rules to fuck with them so it can just be instead of saying the number eight you have to say the alphabet backwards oh so every time you get so that's not embarrassing you don't have to do anything social it's just really hard just an infinite this is how i am so clever is i'll just look up some rules that other people make up for the game and then i'll be like great do this one's fun. And I came up with it just now. That's like, I used to have a note in my phone for two truths and a lie, because I'm so bad at thinking of things about myself on the spot.

And I'm like, I already have, Oh, just off the top of my head here. Oh, we're doing two truths and a lie. Yeah. Real fast.

Yeah. Every week here on tangents, we get together to try to unnerve disgust and horrify each other with science facts sorry i didn't do anything halloweeny for the banter sam that's okay i was trying to think of something but it's early september so it's kind of tough our panelists are playing for gory and for candy which we will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of them will be crowned the king of Halloween. And if the guest is the treat of Trick or Treat Month, here's the trick. Our regular panel will all take turns presenting games this month, and I will be playing along. Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional

science poem this week from Siobhan. This is an elegy to the bones I wrote my project on for my third year class, Human Bones, because I have a degree in archaeology, taught by Dr. Kate Robson Brown. Bones are dyed a gorgeous ochre red, all five foot three of them or thereabout, from all the dirt that was your final bed or should have been but some suburban lout obsessed with finding treasure dug you up and put you in a box to study more your body in an overflowing cup of artifacts and remnants to explore so here i try to puzzle out your life a woman's life i think but can't be sure. Did you know love's sweet, unending strife? And were you kind or cruel or demure?

The only truth I know from your detritus is you had ankylosing spondylitis. Hot damn, that was good. We've got Edgar Allan Poe over here. It was beautiful. It was very creepy. It felt like the rhyme scheme felt creepy for some reason. It shakespeare baby it's a shakespearean sonnet it here's the thing about the english education system it's 95 poems and writing them and learning other people's poems off by heart wow we don't have that yeah we have four percent as poetry and it's just and then the rest is like how to make a hot dog you know how to drill for oil how to drill for oil how to pay a lot of money

for health care that's what they teach two of those things seem much harder than the other one they don't want you to think too hard about the health care one at all yeah no so what is your what was your what was your degree in archaeology cool i was an archaeologist for about a year after i graduated and very quickly realized like oh this is not for me this is so hard it's such a hard job you're in the field uh you're covered in mud do we get do we make the topic tombs knowing that siobhan was an archaeologist? Oh, yeah. I'm a real pro. Okay. Okay. I was like, that would be very weird.

But it's great that you have a spooky subject matter. I have a spooky subject matter. I've spookily dug up multiple drainage ditches, which is what you mostly find when you're an archaeologist. Well, we got to redo the episode now. Drainage ditches. Yeah, ditches. They're very spooky. Can you tell us what tombs are?

I mean, kind of. Siobhan can probably do it better than me or with more specificity. But as far as I could find, tombs are a very general term. There are lots of different structures or enclosures of various sizes where humans in the present or past put their dead. And sometimes they're underground, sometimes they're above ground, sometimes they're just like a pile of rocks. There are pyramids and obelisks and mounds of dirt and like the mausoleums that you see that just look like little houses. Basically any structure humans could construct, you can also put dead people in there. And then it's a tomb.

And then it's a tomb, baby. But now we have to poke holes. What if it's frogs instead of people? What if I build a little house for dead frogs and I put dead frogs in there on little shelves. As long as it was created consciously and purposefully by a human, I would say that that is a tomb. Because it's about the creation by the humans. It's not actually about what's buried in there. In fact, you can have a tomb that has no body in it.

Just not used yet. A memorial, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Not the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but like if somebody died at sea. Sure. For example, there are graves, there are tombs that are erected to that person, even though the body isn't there. Does it have to have more than one body in it? No. It can just be one person. It can just be one person. It can be zero people. It can be multiple

people. The person can be buried there directly. It could be cremated remains. It could be, often the body is left, you know, in, for example, Neolithic British tombs. They let the body decay fully down to bones and then they would collect the bones up in a little pile and put it in a nook they were thinking they were like people we got thousands of years to be doing this we're not gonna what else do you have to do it's the neolithic you're you're you're digging hen monuments you're you're uh doing agriculture for the first time which means you're not traveling around. You already built your house.

You got so much free time in the winter, especially. What are you doing? I will continue to poke a hole. What if I'm a murderer and I put them in there without their consent and in secret? I don't think consent is necessary for it to be called a tomb. I think for it to be a tomb, there has to be a monumental aspect to it. Just to be marked somehow. I agree. Which I don't mean it's like a big monument, but something that is marking the death of a person who is loved or respected.

So I have to be a murderer who loves and respects my victims. Great. Right. Well, an unmarked grave, I wouldn't call a tomb. Certainly not. No, I definitely did not know what a tomb was going into this. I had a vague idea, but now I'm like, oh, okay, there's actually people have thought about this. Wikipedia doesn't really clear it up too much either,

because it just lists every kind of way somebody could get buried, basically. It is a very cool list, though. I learned about new ways that people can get buried from that list, like hanging coffins, which are used by cultures like Indonesia and the Philippines. People would carve their own stone enclosures for when they would die. And then these would be hung on cliffside faces because those are the spaces where they had to memorialize the dead. And so instead of burying them within the ground, it's just like, we're going to create this little nook for you.

Like a big wall of dead people? Yeah. Wow. Vertical graveyard. And sometimes they're stacked pretty close together. Yeah, vertical graveyard. And not down in the ground, but like... Cool. It's a great view? Yeah. Wow. Vertical graveyard. And sometimes they're stacked pretty close together. Yeah, vertical graveyard. And not down in the ground, but like. Cool.

It's a great view. Yeah. Seaside, oceanside. Sari, do you know where the word tomb comes from? And why does it have a B on it? Yeah, I know both of those questions, I think. So the word tomb in English comes from the French word tomb, where they pronounce the B a little bit harder. And I think the B became silent in the Middle English period. So after we stole the word from French, as languages want to do. from French as languages want to do.

Like other words, like lamb and dumb, the, the B held on to the end, but we just dropped the sound of it. So there are lots of words that ended up with the B, but it used to be pronounced. It used to be vocalized in French and then also in ancient Greek. And the ancient Greek word for a burial mound was Timbos or Timbos.

I couldn't get a sense of the O of what it was supposed to be. And it just referred to any sort of grave or tomb, usually a mound of dirt or rock monolith or things like that. And then before that, the etymology gets a little weird. We're not sure whether that Greek word came from ancient Greek and kind of was related to the word typha, which was a lot of different things, monsters, storms, diseases, plants, all kinds of things kind of congealed into this word,

or whether it was a cognate with the Latin word tumulus, which is still a word that's used to describe like barrows or like mound type graves. That sounds pretty likely, huh? Right? Yeah. And so some linguists are like, oh, they sound the same, so it's probably related to tumulus,

which is also where we get tumor or tuberculosis or things like that, just a swelling, a swelling of the ground. Fairy barrows. That's what we call them where I'm from. Oh, that sounds very british that's ground tumors yeah and that means that it's time for us to move on to the quiz portion of our show this week i won't be playing a little game called the gauntlet

yeah a gauntlet with the guest is a brave brave move i don't make these decisions but i agree with you to start we're going to be facing a series of seven questions of decreasing difficulty i will be directing the questions to you from seven to one asking just one of you at a time and you can choose either to answer or pass. If you answer and are correct, you will be given the points, the same number of points as the question number. So the harder questions get you more points.

If you're wrong, you will lose that number of points and your opponent can steal for that same number of points. But if they're wrong, they don't lose any points. Also new rule. If your opponent attempts to steal the question and gets it wrong, then the next person after them attempts to steal the question and also gets it wrong,

that question will then be off the table for future rounds of the game. So we've got to stop. We're not going to try and get the answer if nobody knows the answer. If you pass, your opponent will get asked the next question, which will be a little less difficult. After we've gone through all the questions, we will revisit the past questions. Only this time

they cannot be skipped. If you get the answer wrong, your opponents can steal from you. And remember, pay attention to all the questions because sometimes you might get clues to help you with those harder questions. For today's episode of The Gauntlet, we're going to be talking undiscovered tombs of historical

figures and the work that goes into making them discovered. Starting with question seven. In 1485, King Richard III of England was killed in battle and. Brought back to Lester to be buried at a church. Local legend said that his bones were later dug up by a mob and thrown into a river during the Reformation. Recent historians have disputed that lore and came up with a more likely location that turned out to be correct. Where did they think? It was a car park, Hank. They found him in a car park.

Great. British question for a British person. Seven points for me! Next question! Our hardest game, most complicated rules, and Siobhan is a genius. So, yeah. In 2012, the Leicester City Council, University the leicester city council university of leicester and richard the third society began an archaeological dig out of the parking lot of the social services department

in the very first trench they dug and within six hours of their two-week excavation they managed to find a skeleton whose body bore signs of battle wounds and the curved spine and eventually uh they did some some DNA sampling and carbon dating and confirmed that the bones belonged to King Richard III. A car park. My kingdom for a car park. Why did Mob pull them out and throw them somewhere else? Here's the thing.

The Tudors who came after Richard III, just incredible propagandists. Really, really good at propaganda propaganda so a lot of the stories you hear about richard the third you have to sort of look at through the lens of what the tutors were saying about him afterwards because he had a much more real uh claim to the throne than the tutors had the tutors were like somebody's great aunt was married to the bastard son of somebody's cousin all right sam question number six the great pyramid of giza was built on the order of pharaoh kufu uh though his actual burial location remains unknown

scientists recently had to refute claims that they'd found his burial location after they identified a horizontal chamber above the entrance to the pyramid. One of the techniques they used to discover this chamber relies on being able to detect a specific particle. This is like a physics particle. Damn it. What particle? This is so much hotter than my question. We made a SciShow episode about this. Well, I mean, maybe if you're British.

Waves, some kind of waves of some sort well more of a particle than a wave oh shit well then i don't know uh you're not gonna you can you can you can pass you're right you can pass i'm choosing to pass all right so sam has passed so sari here's your question number five according to legend genghis khan did not want people to know where he was buried and asked that the site be kept a secret and reporters who have talked to people in mongolia have found that that sentiment holds among many today but that has not stopped others from trying to find genghis khan's tomb in, researchers used the search for the tomb as an opportunity to test out crowdsourcing, asking more than 10,000 online volunteers to sift through more

than 80,000 images covering small chunks of the Mongolian landscape. The volunteers were asked to label images with up to five tags, including modern structure, ancient structure, roads, and other. What was the fifth tag? So there was modern structure, ancient structure roads and other what was the fifth tag so there was modern structure ancient structure roads uh a a fourth one and then just other what was the fourth thing as a thing people maybe were seeing hill hill is a great guess but it is wrong okay javon you have a chance to steal if you would like to and there's no cost to this okay I will say some kind of water source river lake

river is the image that was my guess too if it was a record show I would have said river so the researchers used the tomb of Genghis Khan as an example of a needle in a haystack problem except where you don't know what the needle actually looks like no burials of Mongolian imperial family members have been found so there's little way for people to be able to figure out what the tomb would even look like. Instead, the researchers were focused on seeing how the volunteers responded to the task

and how they shaped their choice of tags when they saw the choices that other volunteers made. The end result was a crowdsourced map of 100 highly ranked locations, 55 of which turned out to be what they called archaeologically and culturally significant sites that included some burial sites. The actual location

of gingus comes to him remains unknown though there are a few locations that do seem somewhat likely figuring out which one would be the actual one who the heck knows siobhan you get to go again and i don't know why we're still doing this because you've all basically already won while nicholas copernicus died in 1543 uh it buried beneath the cathedral, his grave was unmarked and the location of his remains remained ambiguous for centuries. But in 2005, Polish archaeologists found some skeleton fragments that belonged to a man who could have been Copernicus, lacking DNA from any relatives to compare to, researchers weren't sure what they could use to identify the remains until Swedish researchers brought up that they had an item belonging to Copernicus that might contain some of his hair. What was it? The Swedes had this item? The Swedes had an item that might contain hair of Copernicus. Hair

of Copernicus. And it's not a comb or a brush. And these are Swedish scientists that have this or like a Swedish museum? Swedish. Can I ask that? Is that or it's just a bunch of random Swedes? It says they were researchers so my guess is that probably they were connected to a museum.

I will guess my knowledge of Copernicus not being very high, that it was a telescope of some kind that they used hair in some kind of construction for. Could have been, but it wasn't. That wasn't it. Was that close? Was it close? I mean, in that it's about... So no, I think the answer is no.

Not even a little bit close. Because that makes me think it could have been something like a crosshair, something with a crosshair in it that he had used. Oh, that's very smart. Like a level or like a sextant. Is it a sextant? That's a telescope probably, kind of, huh? Okay.

Sextant is not a telescope. Sextant is for star measurement. It's telescope adjacent. Yeah. You look through something. It's definitely a scientific instrument. Yeah. With a telescope.

Clothing would be too obvious, I think. And also, like a notebook. Like, he wrote a lot of books. I'm just going to give it to you. It was a book. Wow. It was like a book of measurements of stuff, an astronomical reference book that I think that he created. So that definitely passes.

It was called the Calendarium Romanium Magnum. Oh, no, it wasn't his book. It was by Johann Stoffler, and it had been used by Copernicus for quite some time. And when Sweden invaded Poland, the book was moved to Sweden and later became the property of the university there. And the researchers ended up finding nine hairs in the book, four of which ended up matching the skeleton, suggesting that it was indeed the remains of Copernicus. What the heck? Wild. And just some other people's hair in there, too.

You can find other skeletons. That was just all of his best buddies yeah they're reading the book together as you do just hunched right over it really looking at the calendar with your friends we all love looking at the roman calendar with our friends they didn't have tv yet okay you couldn't watch orange is the new black you had to watch that. Sam, in 2008, archaeologists were digging up a tomb in Magdeburg Cathedral, and they were surprised to find that it was not empty. Inside was a lead box with an inscription translating to, The remains of Queen Edegarth are in this sarcophagus. Of course, one does not simply

trust inscriptions, and the archaeologists wanted to confirm that these were in fact the remains of the queen who died around 946 CE. One method they used relied on the ratio of strontium isotopes found in a particular part of the skeleton's remain. What

part was it i know this oh my god i hate you i think i know it i think i don't know like a fake tooth is it a fake tooth it's a real tooth and that's great i'll give it to you okay great thank you a tooth period but that's a good instinct because like the skeleton is universally made of like the same thing over and over again just bone except for the teeth yeah and she didn't have like a new hip put in or anything probably no so because the ratio of strontium isotopes can tell scientists about the types of food and water we eat as we grow up and rocks form with small traces of rubidium 87 which decays into

strontium 87 and you can use the ratio of strontium 87 to the more stable strontium 86 to date the rocks as older rocks will have a lower ratio but importantly as rocks weather that strontium gets into the soil which then gets into the meat and the grains we eat which then turn gets into our teeth so as we grow up the meat and the grains we eat, which then gets into our teeth. So as we grow up, the strontium ratio of our teeth will reflect the strontium ratio in the areas we were growing up in. That's so smart. Scientists are so smart. I would like to say, Siobhan, when we were emailing, you were like, oh, I was an archaeologist once for a year a long time ago.

You're a freaking genius. That's not fair. I just have a really good memory for really useless facts. I'm just very smart, is Siobhan. I'm just really smart. I'm really clever, and I keep reading things about the things that I don't do anymore. That's not fair. I don't do them anymore.

All right. We've got Sari now for question number two. Richard III did not leave behind any living descendants. So when archaeologists found the skeleton and his possible burial place, they relied on DNA to identify the body. Problem is, Richard III did not have any descendants. The researchers didn't have any old books or similar items to get hair samples from. didn't have any old books or similar items to get hair samples from, but they were able to identify an all-female line of descent through Richard III's sister.

This meant they were able to gather a particular type of DNA passed down through our mothers that they could then match to Richard III's DNA. What type of DNA was that? Biology question. Thank goodness. Mitochondrial DNA. That's correct. Mito correct mitochondria have their own dna and it's only passed down through the egg cell and so it's only through the matrilineal line so i have my mother's dna uh and she has her mother's dna and so on but my son doesn't have

any of my mitochondrial dna he has catherine's has Catherine's mother's mitochondrial DNA, et cetera. So they can use that to track the descent in a different way and still be able to know that it was that guy, even though he doesn't have any living descent. That's the second, our easiest question. Oh, I mean, I knew the, I knew that one. Okay. I knew that one. Okay. Well, last question, please. Last question is for Siobhan. All right.

In 2022, Swedish archaeologist and Polish research, Polish researcher. I'm not making it easy for me here. A lot of Polish questions. Polish researcher. Both made claims that they had identified the burial site of King. Oh,

it's just Harold. that they had identified the burial site of King Harald. Oh, it's just Harald. I don't know why I had to say that. Yeah. God damn it. If you laugh that hard, we're going to keep it in. And that's terrifying for me. Harald.

Harald. King Harald I of Denmark, who was killed in a battle around 987 CE and who was, according to them, buried in what is today a church in Poland. While they relied on artifacts and geological satellite images, currently there is not much evidence in the form of muons or other particles to suggest that this is where King Harold was buried. However, the king has had a very clear legacy on our lives thanks to a modern day technology whose name is inspired by the dead tooth that King Harold was known for. What is that technology? It's Bluetooth, Hank. It's Bluetooth, Siobhan. It's Bluetooth. Guess he had a Bluetooth harold bluetooth yes the little rune that is the bluetooth indicator the bluetooth symbol it was a rune of his name yeah vikings he was known for having united denmark under one ruler

conquering norway and converting the Danes and Norwegians to Christianity. While he was thought to have died in battle, the writings say that he was likely buried in a church in Denmark. The exact location isn't known, which has opened up other theories. One being, it's in your ear. He died in battle because he was listening to his damn wireless headphones. He wasn't paying attention. He was listening to a podcast wireless headphones. He wasn't paying attention. He's like, listening to a podcast? Yeah.

Very distracting. He was laughing at how you said his name and then he got, foop, arrow right through the head. I've learned that it is dangerous to listen to a podcast when you are in a room with a loved one. If you are right now listening to this podcast. Giggling to yourself while your loved one. If you are right now listening to this podcast and you're giggling to yourself while your loved one

and your loved one is asking you a question about your child's breakfast, you should feel shamed just like I did this morning. Yeah. Yeah. Take him out.

Okay, I'm going to try to answer my question now about the particle. The particle's the only one. Yeah, the particle question is the only one we didn't get. This has actually gone way better than a lot of gauntlets.

Because Siobhan is a genius. Clearly, that's the key. We need one smart person. I just remember things. Is it a muon? I don't know anything about particles, though. The physics stuff, I was not very good at. Whose go is it to answer the particle?

Me, my go. Is it a muon? It is. And there was a hint, and you did pick up on it a muon? It is. And there was a hint and you did pick up on it. Yes. What is a muon? I have no idea what a muon is. It's a particle.

Okay. Alright. I don't really know. I barely know what a particle is. It's like not an atom. It's like bits of an atom. Smaller than an atom, yeah. Isn't it like an electron?

It's like a big electron, yeah. Well, we've tallied up the scores, and somehow Sam and Siobhan, in an unjust turn of events, are tied. Wait, what? I'm smart, too, it turns out. I think that Sam didn't get any wrong, and Siobhan, you got one

wrong, and that took away from your score. Dang. Sari has nine, and I maybe have nine if I get all of the negative points. I only have one. Collected to me. I have no chance of winning. Oh, Sari has one, and maybe I have nine, and

maybe I have zero. We'll figure that out later. You definitely have zero. Okay, I definitely have. But I didn't get a chance to get any points. That's okay. Who cares? Fake game.

It's not real. You're not allowed to be the king of Halloween. I paid $500 into the bucket for this game, and if I don't win some of it back, I'm going to feel like I'm being stolen from. Somebody told me to Venmo them. I didn't really get the lowdown on how 21 involves betting at all. Anything can involve betting. If you love to bet, Hank, you can bet anything you want.

Okay. Alright, next up, we're going to take a short break, then Sam has another devious game for us all. Welcome back, everybody. Sam, what are you going to do to us? Okay, so you guys ready? Tombs are many things. They're invaluable sources of archaeological information, acting as a time capsule to another time and culture.

They're also weird and creepy. All of these aspects of tombs make them a terrific breeding ground for hoaxes. Want to try and trick your way into the scientific community? Want to make some money? Want to just make people feel weird? There's a tomb hoax for you. And now I will tell you about some of them, but I've concocted a little hoax of my own. Some of these hoaxes are real hoaxes, and some of these are hoax hoaxes made up by me. It's your job to tell me which is which in a game that I call hoax or hoax hoax. In other words, we're playing truth or fail express with hoaxes.

So it's just true or false. Question one. And you'll all answer these independently. In the 1920s, the state of Mississippi purchased a large collection of artifacts from the estate of a prominent recently deceased citizen. Including in this collection was an Egyptian mummy, which was put on display in the Mississippi Capitol building for decades until, in 1969, an X-ray of the mummy revealed that it was made of papier-mâché and animal bones on top of a wooden frame. Is this a real hoax or a hoax-hoax? I think it's a real hoax because Americans will do the wildest shit with the things in their backyard.

I mean, I think it's a real hoax uh and if it's fake it's got to be close to a real hoax because i've been to a hoax like this it's called the thing and it's a roadside attraction you have to walk through like a whole maze of weird stuff before you arrive at what is definitely a paper mache mummy i think it's real because in the 1920s there was a huge thriving fake mummy business yeah people loved to buy mummies in and honestly like from the 1700s up until i mean people still love to buy fake archaeological things but like there was a big pop in the 1920s because of tootin common this is probably the best performance of anyone on any episode of tangents by siobhan it's a real hoax it wasn't even x-rayed because anyone was suspicious

of its authenticity though a medical student named gentry yeetman wanted to autopsy it for signs of ancient disease and then he did and then he said wait a minute. The ancient diseases said this is a dog. This isn't even a guy. All right. Next up. In 1987, a team of archaeologists were investigating a Mayan tomb in Belize when they discovered an extremely out of place pop culture reference. A small engraving placed on one of the sarcophagi featuring the images of Star Wars droids R2-D2 and C-3PO. The researchers made no assumption that it was

authentic obviously and eventually a local sculptor admitted to sneaking the anachronistic artifact into the tomb several years before just for fun real hoax or hoax hoax i love it i want to say it's real yeah this is really tough because people are scams and i respect it we used to do this when I was an archaeologist. When we would fill in the trenches, we would just throw in a handful of coins or something, or something from the world to confuse the next lot of archaeologists to come along. I think you should do that. To be like, hey, have fun.

This is just a joke for the future. They must have done it for ritual purposes. Yes, exactly. But is there a big tomb thing in the Mayan? Don't ask us. I'm not a big Mayan guy. I think it might be fake. I'm going to go fake on this one.

I'm also going to go hoax, hoax. I think it's fake fake thanks for using the correct the correct term sir you're welcome i'm a professional the answer is this hoax is a hoax hoax i made it all up but it was inspired by the hieroglyphics of r2d2 and c3po that you can see in the great movie ride at disney mgm studios next up in the late 1890s the louvre bought a gold crown allegedly belonging to an ancient middle eastern king for a whole lot of money upon displaying the piece several experts told the louvre that the crown was clearly fake but the louvre said nah until 1903 when a ukrainian artist who made the crown went to the louvre to tell them he had made

it at the behest of a dealer who told him it was intended as a gift for a friend, but the Louvre still didn't believe him. So he made another crown and said, look, I made another crown. And they said, fine, we believe you real hoax or hoax hoax. I'm going to go real because museums still do this stuff. There's something rotten in the state of denmark uh when it comes to museums you can't believe everything that they write on the little uh captions the new the the metropolitan museum got in trouble this year for buying stolen artifacts and artifacts that were

um not as real as they were claiming to be they They were like Egyptian stuff that they'd like stuck one thing on top of the other. Maybe that's the story I based this on. Hmm. Yeah, maybe, but I'm going to go with true as well. Uh,

just because that seems, I mean, I think Sam's just too good at selling this stuff. I agree. Multi-layered good twists and turns the artist coming back at the end character development you know all right so this hoax was a real hoax the louvre was super embarrassed about this whole thing but the guy who made the crown got famous for being so good at making stuff like crowns and he lived in paris for the rest of his life and even received a gold medal from the paris salon

of decorative arts the louvre would later display massive amounts of cope when the crown was the rest of his life and even received a gold medal from the Paris Salon of Decorative Arts. The Louvre would later display massive amounts of cope when the crown was included in their Salon of Fakes exhibition in the 50s. You might notice that I didn't mention tombs at all in this fact. I'll just assume that somebody told somebody this was from a tomb. I'm not really sure, but it was too good of a story not to do. I'm not worried about it, Sam. I hadn't thought of that. That had not occurred to me. performing brain surgery, or people riding on and hunting dinosaurs. The Eco Stones are, of course, hoaxes, but the question is, are they a real hoax or a hoax hoax by me, the hoax master? Did you just make it up or is it a real thing? Yeah.

I think I might just go with real hoax for all of them. I think I just like I'm settling, but I think they're all real. I think this one's real too. I think I'm going to go real on this one too. Rats. It's a real one when an episode of the bbc documentary series horizon covered the eco stones in 1977 the farmer who claimed to have found and sold them brought were brought was brought to the attention of the peruvian authorities because if the dude really found and sold these stones then he was committing a crime but then the farmer told him that he and his wife had

just made the stones to sell to tourists there's a nice couple's crafting activity and they were like actually that's fine you're totally allowed you can't grave rob but but lying to tourists is great that's a okay good for the economy they're great looking stones too and finally a short but sweet one in 2017 a team of archaeologists opened a sarcophagus in the ancient egyptian city of memphis to find that a merry prankster had wrapped a teddy bear in gauze and placed it next to the mummy inside the archaeologist dated the teddy bear to 1994 by reading the tag attached to it no culprit was ever identified real hoax or hoax hoax hoax hoax there's a lot of tombs in memphis however they are underground

so if you were going to break into this tomb open the sarcophagus put a teddy bear in and then leave seems like a lot of work seems like a lot of work so for that reason i'm going to go hoax hoax just giving too many good reasons because now we're all going to say hoax hoax i'm going to say real hoax just to switch it up who knows this people are scamps now i learned that people are scamps so you know the scamp logic you say you come out looking like a total blockhead because this was a hoax hoax i just made it up entirely i like the the object was dated by looking at the tag. That's very good. Yes, the Beanie Baby birthday was there. It was 1994. Beanie Babies were worth billions of dollars.

That teddy bear enriched that tomb by a significant amount. All right. Well, that means that in amongst all of the fighting that just occurred, our final candy count, Sam has nine, Sari has five, I have four, or maybe, or maybe 13,

and Siobhan, doesn't matter what I have, has 14. Wow. Congratulations. Boo, boo, boo, boo. You deeply earned it. Wow, maybe I should go back and get my masters. Maybe it's time.

I think this is a sign, yeah. I think just play them this podcast episode yeah and i'll be like here you go yeah what else could you possibly have to learn you know exactly exactly here's the thing with archaeology it's just a bunch of dweebs who just like learning little fun facts and that's that's the that's the nature of the the industry that's that's the kind of dweeb i am uh but i'll learn the fun facts after they work hard to find them, and then they'll just tell them. You'll just read it on the internet later.

I just did that from bed. Great. And now it's time to ask the science couch, where we've got a question for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. Just for playlists on YouTube asks, how do large burial mounds affect the local ecosystem? I grew up in Florida where there's huge mounds of mostly shellfish shells. And I never really thought about how it is basically a giant garbage.

Alkalizing the soil. Yeah, definitely doesn't do nothing. But that's all. That's my only thought that I have. Head empty. Otherwise, help. Help someone. I think it depends on how many bodies are buried in the mound.

I would imagine like if you're talking about one body, probably not very much. If you're talking about hundreds, probably quite a lot. Is that useful? Yeah. Sarah's actually done research. I have done research. Which is the research which is about this part of the podcast and so yeah i think to some extent it depends on how many bodies but i think that there's a lot we don't know about this pop culture phenomenon of uh vegetation on top of the earth indicating

where dead bodies or where decomposition is happening underneath the earth so there is some observable effect that bodies buried in very shallow graves and that are allowed to decompose can increase vegetation but we don't really know why and we don't know if it's consistent and so the the main ways that burial mounds actually affect the local ecosystems aren't because of the decomposing bodies, but because they are cultural sites. Of course, there are some situations where people are like, I want to do agriculture here and just kind of bulldoze an area, often destroying burial mounds in the process. But if those mounds are left alone, they actually have higher native plant biodiversity

because oftentimes when humans get our hands on green spaces, we manicure it or plant what we want to. But in a lot of regions, particularly in Europe and Central Asia, where there are these vast grasslands that are oftentimes disturbed by human settlements or developments, these burial mounds are really hotspot ecosystems for native grasses, a lot of biodiversity, particularly of insects and pollinators and kind of boring plants, but that are really important for the environment because they're left untouched. But there's this idea that if for cultural reasons,

we leave something alone, then the nature is doing okay. It's the story of Chernobyl where it's like, oh, well, we can't go there. And then nature's like, great.

That's actually, you're the biggest problem. You are a bigger problem than the giant nuclear power plant that exploded. I'll invent a new type of mushroom and this will be okay. Yeah.

We'll just have some dogs evolve to be better at being dogs. If you want to ask the Science Couch your questions, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week.

Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thank you to Charlie Crossing on Discord and at Solok Holmes on YouTube and also everybody else who asked us questions for this episode. Siobhan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Where can we see what you're up to these days? Well, social media is falling into a black pit of death. So don't even think about looking for me there. So I don't know, watch Dimension 20 on Dropout or on YouTube.

Hank is there as well for a little bit. And we've got a bunch more coming out this year as well as that. We're going on tour to the UK in April, but I think it's already sold out. And I don't know if you see me in the street. Be nice to me, please. I'm very sensitive. You just start this podcast over again and there you'll be. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that.

First, you can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents to become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes. And don't forget, we have hit 700 patrons on our Patreon, which means that we're going to be doing a commentary on the Minions movie. So get ready to hear a whole lot about piss. If that sounds good to you, be sure to join our Patreon at any level to get access to that commentary as soon as it is released. Second, leave us a review wherever you listen. It's super helpful enough to know what you think about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. I've been Hank Green.

I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. I've been me the whole time. What a reveal. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz our associate producer is Eve Schmidt our editor is Seth Glicksman, our story editor is Alex Billow, our social media organizer

is Julia Buzz-Bazio, our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti our sound design is by Joseph Bouda-Metish were we doing creepy ones before? or was that the first one just for him just for tuna

okay our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney and me Hank Green and of course we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon

thank you and remember the mind is not a coffin to be filled but a jack-o-lantern to be lighted. But, one more thing. In February 2004,

the marble tomb of the Italian warlord Cangre de la Scala was opened so that we could do science on his body. Written documents from July 1329 said that his sudden death was from drinking from a polluted spring, which led to a fever, diarrhea and vomiting, TMI. researchers wanted to investigate this claim, Kangray's body was naturally mummified and luckily there was a bunch of old poo in his colon and rectum that they could sample along with his bones and liver and other less related body parts. In a paper published in February 2015 in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the team reported evidence of foxglove pollen grains in his rectum and two foxglove derived toxins in his liver and poo that were at lethal concentrations 700 years ago so they concluded that can grade may have been intentionally poisoned rather than randomly sick leaving us with a murder mystery that will probably never be sold it is wild that we grow foxgloves so much because they are so deeply deeply poisonous

they are so poisonous it is so you can breathe in foxglove and die what does foxglove look like it they're beautiful flowers you would recognize them because they're in every single garden i do think my wife is growing these so watch watch out if I disappear. Be careful. I mean, I just simply would not eat anything that she gives me.