Stuff You Should Know - Archaeology in a Nutshell

Episode Date: May 29, 2014

If you thought Indiana Jones was the model archaeologist, you're pretty much right. Archaeologists are one part scientist, one part scholar, and one part adventurer. In this episode, learn all you need to know this fascinating field. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and all with us again. And it's morning edition at HouseStuffWorks. That's right. The Indiana Jones Chronicles. He's in this article.

Man, you can't do archaeology without talking about Indiana Jones because... You can't spell it without Indiana Jones. And do you know why? Because as his article points out, archaeologists are one-part explorer, one-part scholar. One-part PT, Barnum, one-part BS Skinner. One-part scientist and one-part historian, which is true and that is exactly who Indiana Jones was. Oh, yeah, plus he knew his way around to whipping a gun.

Well, you know, if you're going to get the Ark of the Covenant, you're going to have to whip a couple of dudes. Right. That's what Steven Spielberg says at least. I know. He got that across quite plainly. Yeah. The whip thing was a good idea.

That was neat. Yeah. Throwback. Sure. Although he never whipped a cigarette out of somebody's mouth, which I was waiting for like the whole movie. Oh, that's a parlor trick. Yeah.

Well, it's pretty cool. It is very cool. Did you have an intro? Did I spoil it? No. That was as good an intro as any. Great. You know me in archaeology.

That was the first word I could spell. Was it really? Let me take that back. That was the first big word I could spell. I'm sure I had like dog and cat and all that down first. But I remember being in second or third grade and spelling it and the teacher being like, wow. And I was like, yeah, I'll bet you're impressed because I'm young and I can spell archaeology

correctly. And she said, go sit in the corner. The reason why I could spell it is because I'd already been studying it for years. I've always been fascinated by archaeology. Yeah. I could have seen you doing this for a living. My buddy, Jerry, out in Portland. Jerry's both of our buddy.

No, no, no. Different Jerry. Oh, okay. Jerry in Portland, male Jerry. I got you. His Jerry Purvis is a... There you go. That's why we have last names.

He was a history and I think anthropology major too and wanted to get into archaeology. So all those disciplines. Like it's a science that is heavily butted up against the humanities. It's pretty neat. Well, it's kind of absorbed them kind of like some early bacteria absorbed mitochondria and used it for itself, the power. Wow. Yeah.

But it's very much in that vein. Like archaeology started out as a very straightforward, simplistic discipline. And at one point, finally, the archaeologists got bored and they said, this could be so much more. And they explained it, which we'll talk about when we get into the history of archaeology. But just the word itself, it does definitely conjure Indiana Jones. And he was one part this, one part that, and yes, archaeologists are that. But the entire pursuit of archaeology is so unwieldy.

There's so much to it. Having all human industry from the very recent past to the furthest reaches into human history, that the field is broken into a lot of different disciplines. And even those are broken further into sub-disciplines. So much so that if you take a forensic archaeologist and put it up against a glacial archaeologist, you'll be like, are these two really the same in the same field? Yeah, they are, but they definitely, you might not have a lot to talk about. You know?

Like, how about that ice? And the forensic guy's going, how about that grave site? Yeah. Like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Crime is crazy. They're also broken into geographical areas sometimes, or like time periods. Yeah, like you are a Mesopotamian archaeologist. Yeah, that's your specialty.

Right. And that makes sense. There's underwater archaeologists, which I think I've, I wrote a few of these articles back then. I think I did one on underwater archaeology, too. That's so interesting. That we didn't touch on. Well, that's super interesting because the trick with all archaeology is preservation.

You don't just dig in there with a shovel and like pick up the vase like in the movie and shake it, see what's inside. It's a lot more technical than that. And with underwater archaeology, you know, that stuff is so fragile, you have to transport it in the exact state that it was in. So like, if you find a book down there, you have to put that book in a tank of salt water at the right temperature. A book?

Well, yeah, sure. Okay. Well, you know, I'm not saying it's been down there a thousand years. Right. You catch mouth last week. I have this, a stopwatch from the Titanic. Yeah. A pocket watch.

Sure. You have to transport it in a tank of salt water at that temperature. Right. With the right amount of sand to wherever you're going to take it to your laboratory, essentially. And then put on an expensive exhibit. Yes, exactly. And underwater archaeology isn't necessarily just stuff that sunk, although that part is so fascinating, like things that are supposed to be above water that are now submerged just

take on a whole different attitude to me. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Waterlogged. Yeah. But there's other underwater archaeology too that goes beyond shipwrecks. They recently found a 9,000-year-old hunting blind in Lake Huron.

What? Yeah. It used to be above water. And then after the Ice Age, the water levels rose and covered it up. And they recently discovered it under 121 feet of water. And it basically consists of some lanes of stone with a cul-de-sac. Wow. Yeah.

That they would kind of use to shoot caribou through. And then at the end, they're like the caribou are like, oh, cul-de-sac and then death. Wow. Yeah. But they recognized this. Yeah. And then documented it under 120 feet of water in Lake Huron. That sounds like it perhaps could have been an accidental find, do you know?

I don't know how they're looking for that. I don't know. Yeah. But the idea that you could look at some rocks and be like, oh, well, this is a hunting blind from 9,000 years ago used to hunt caribou underwater, that just seems really special to me. That is very cool. But I mentioned accidental finds because that's one of the neat things about archaeology.

If you're an archaeologist, clearly you are going to have a be in your bonnet to go find whatever it is, Ark of the Covenant. But there's things found all the time just by people who stumble upon them. Accidental finds. Yeah. Because there's junk everywhere. Like the cave paintings at Lascaux? Yeah.

I want to say junk. I mean that in the stuff way. In the academic sense. Yeah. Not worthless. It's all great stuff. But the Lascaux cave in France was discovered accidentally by some local teens. Yeah.

Apparently there was a storm and a tree fell over and it exposed this cave entrance that had been covered for thousands and thousands of years. Yeah. The Dead Sea Scrolls. That was an accident. Yeah. A 1947, a Bedouin shepherd found them and said, hey, these, these will comport it. What else?

1940, forward little French school boys. That's Lascaux. Oh, is that Lascaux? Yeah. I don't know why she didn't put it in the article. Yeah. That is weird. She left out that one word.

All right. So let's go back a little bit and talk about how this stuff all started. Because in the, you know, 12, 13, 14 centuries people really weren't too concerned about the past. Well, that's not true. They weren't looking for artifacts though necessarily. Or if they were looking for artifacts, they were just looting it and selling it and maybe melting it down for its gold.

Sure. And the artifact itself didn't necessarily have any value simply because it was old. Yeah. That's a good way to say it. That came about as a result of the rise of humanism, which gave rise to the humanities, which basically prized art for art's sake and gave birth to the concept that antiquities have value because of their age. And then the Renaissance basically, it was birthed from the Renaissance.

There's a dude named Flavio Biondo. That was my clumsy attempt. You want to take it? No. That was great. Say it again. Flavio Biondo. See?

It's so easy. You have to put like energy into it and then you're Italian. Yeah. I think that's my problem because I'm fairly low key, you know? Yeah, sure. Anyway, Flavio Biondo was the first person to create a guide to the ruins of ancient Rome in the early 15th century. And a lot of people say that is the first person you can point to who gave rise to archaeology

potentially. And so basically these things that we find, maybe we shouldn't just melt down. Yeah. Maybe we should preserve them and this is sort of an important thing for the future. Exactly, right. So he was one of the first and then from that point on, the idea of collecting things kind of took hold. And it was a little nut so for a while like people would just go into it.

There was no, there was no aim to preserve the site itself. Right. You just wanted all the artifacts from the site so you could fill your palace with them. Yeah. And I get the sense that there was definitely a boom in the Renaissance and among royalty of wanting things from ancient Greece and Rome. And I know the Queen of Naples wanted, you know, ancient statues and things to fill her palace and, you know, trying to find out what happened with Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Yeah. That's why they were excavated in 1748 was after their stuff. And Pompeii is really neat by the way. Yeah. But all of the artifacts, it's totally deserted. Everything that's there is a permanent structure. Oh really? All of the artifacts have been removed and they're still in Naples where they were taken

in 1748. Yeah, and we'll get a little bit later on into like who owns this stuff. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. But Napoleon was a big proponent of archaeology. And I know we talked during the King Tut's Tomb episode about Egyptology and he formed the Institute of Egypt, basically a think tank in the late 1700s of 175 scholars. And it was just that fascination with Egypt and Napoleon was all over it, formed this

think tank and said go find stuff and collect it for me. And they published a book too that really kind of loosed archaeology and the idea of archaeology on the world is called Description of Egypt that they published in 1809. Such a bland title. It was, but it like created Egypt fever. And so that came out in 1809. In 1812, a British guy named Richard Colt Hor, H-O-A-R-E, he wrote a book called Ancient History of Wiltshire in 1812 and basically he described methods for excavating methodically.

He also was the first to identify what are called tells, which are ancient mounds of basically a city being built on a city on a city on a city on a city that they've been continuously occupied for thousands and thousands of years. And then you know who else was a early archaeologist? Harrison Ford. Earlier than him. I don't know. Thomas Jefferson.

Oh, really? Yeah. That surprised me. In the late 18th, early 19th century, he was methodically excavating burial mounds on Monticello on his land at Monticello. Cool. In between rewriting the Bible. Yeah.

He did a lot of stuff. But yeah, he was one of the early ones to methodically do it. So there's like all of this enthusiasm for antiquities and basically what amounts to looting and grave robbing, but simultaneously there's these independent gentlemen scholars who are amateurs because there is no academic field yet who are creating the basically the body of experimental archaeology, how to do it, the methodology, the best practices. Yeah, in the 19th century, a guy named Charles Lyell basically started, they called it uniformitarian stratigraphy.

Yeah. Which is actually a pretty big hornet's nest. Is it? Uh-huh. Well, I looked into the uniformitarianism period and the whole thing is. But what does that have to do with dating? It was a dating system? Yeah.

It basically, before then, there was this thing called catastrophism where basically it was like the earth is static and it changes only in the face of major catastrophes, like a comet strike or something. It's the only thing that changes the earth itself. Yeah. A uniformitarian stratigraphy basically says, no, that's not the case. And it gave us what we now understand as geological processes, geological time scales. It basically said the earth changes constantly, but our lifespan is so short we can't possibly

witness it. Right. It's like this, the processes that take place now are the processes that the earth has always been subjected to. Interesting. So one of those processes is sediment, sediment deposits, and you can date things thanks to sediment deposits because they're actually a predictable thing. So when you're digging into sediment, you're digging into the past and you can date something

you find in that sediment. That's basically what it gave archaeology. Digging into history? Yeah. That sounds like a good idea. You can date from layers of ground. Yeah. It sounds easy now, or not easy, but it makes sense now, but back then it was pretty weird.

That's our worldview now, but this is one of the guys who introduced it. Charles Lyell. Yeah. Our hats are off to you, sir. And he didn't come up with it, but he was a huge proponent of it who gained a lot of traction with it. You're talking about methods in Flinders Petrie, boy, what a great name. In 1904, he wrote a book called Methods and Ames in Archaeology, and that was one of the

first ones to sort of break down how to responsibly excavate the site and not just to go in there and loot it. And that was a big turning point. The 20th century, the turn of the century, the Fendi Siegel, I think is what it's called. Oh, really? Yeah. That was a huge turning point in archaeology. It really represented when methodology took hold.

There was a guy named Heinrich Schleeman who discovered Troy, basically, and he just basically went in and started tearing through the sediment, and he identified a bunch of different layers of occupation, but he didn't really document them like he should. Fortunately, he had an assistant named Wilhelm Dorpfeld, and he kind of took a different approach to it, a much more methodical approach. And all of this took place at around the same time. So even on the site of Troy, this change from pillaging to methodology took place. Yeah.

They probably got tired of hearing their workers say it broke. Right. You know? Yeah. They're like, all right, well, maybe we should slow down and be a little more judicious with the shovel. Dating old things is a big part of archaeology. It's no good just to find something you want to know exactly where it came from.

Because, well, one reason is because it has more value. If it's older, that was probably what led the dating charge. But there's a bunch of different ways they can date, and they have dated over the years. Something can be self-dated. If you find treasure that's stamped with a date, then it's done the work for you. Relative dating, if you find something that's with a bunch of other stuff that you can date, then you can probably say the stuff from King Tut's Tomb is probably all around the same time period.

Right. Clay barf counting, and that is counting barfs, which are little laminated sediments that accumulate, and that can help you out for about 5,000 years back. No, it can go even further than that. Oh, really? Yeah. How far? I mean, as far as you want to go in the sediment.

Oh, really? That's part of the uniformitarian stratigraphy. Oh, I was misreading that. I'm sorry. Our written chronology only goes back 5,000 years. Right. So you can extend it. Yeah.

Yeah. And then the idea, we didn't pay proper homage to Darwin, because his... We did a whole show on him. Right, but in this one, I think. On the origin of species, that presented the idea that mankind had a history that went back way further than a few thousand years, and that kind of inspired archaeology to look around for it more. Right.

And then some of the more recent ones, which we could probably do shows on a couple of these, carbon dating, radioactive carbon dating, potassium argon dating, and thermoluminescence. That measures light energy, the intensity of light energy. Yeah. It's amazing. You can calculate the last time an object was exposed to sunlight through thermoluminescence dating. And with potassium argon dating, you can date things back 2 million years, if you believe

the Earth's been around that long. So just a little more about the history of archaeology, if you'll indulge me. Please. So methodology took place in the early 20th century. It became about that time an academic discipline. Funny enough, they didn't start applying the scientific method to archaeology necessarily until the 50s or 60s. What?

Yeah. That's weird. But it had its own method. And the method among archaeologists was, you find an artifact, you date it, and you catalog it. Yeah. The archaeologists' job was to date and catalog and ultimately contribute to this growing body of knowledge that was the timeline of human history.

Yeah. And preserve, obviously. Right. But it was like these tools are older than this tool, which means that the people who made these tools were the predecessors of the people who made these tools. That was it. They just got bored in the 50s and they said, we're explaining how these tools have progressed or human industry has progressed, but not why.

Right when they decided to start answering why, archaeology became a far more interesting field. It became a multidisciplinary field. And all of a sudden they're bringing in experts in ceramics, experts in metallurgy and grabbing all these people from different fields and saying, how can we answer why this changed? What led to what change? And archaeology at that point in about the 50s or 60s became the very far-flung, widespread, all-encompassing discipline that it is today.

That's awesome. Yeah. So with help? Yeah, with a little help from their friends. From their expert friends. Yeah. All right. I guess we can talk right after this message break a little bit about how things start off

if you want to get something up. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

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Fieldwork is a word that you're going to hear in archaeology a lot. And depending on who you talk to, it might entail the whole process or just out on the field at the actual excavation. But I think most folks nowadays consider fieldwork the excavation. And all the pre-work, there's a lot of research that goes into it beforehand in offices, in school rooms, in libraries, and what have you. Yeah, and I think it's everything including excavation or it's all the stuff that leads up to excavation.

Yeah. It's considered fieldwork, right? Yeah, I would call it pre-dig activity. That's what I would go with. So excavation and fieldwork are two different things for you. Sure. Okay. If I was opening up my own archaeological firm, that would be my model.

It seems to be really, there's not a big problem with it either way. So when you do find something, like you said, there's a couple of different ways things can be found. They can be determinedly, doggedly, solid after, which can be part of the fieldwork going through the stacks in a library, looking for references in ancient literature, and just kind of trying to figure out where something might be. That's what Schleeman did with Troy. He read the Iliad, I believe, which describes the Trojan War, and said...

Look for clues. Yes. Yeah. And that's when he was like, I'm pretty sure this is where Troy is. Yeah, you're like a sort of a history detective at that point. Exactly. Indiana Jones. After that, you have to go get some permits, local permits, and you're also going to want

to go get a grant, because you're probably not going to fund this out of your own pocket unless you're somebody like James Cameron or whatever. You know what I mean? No, but grants can come from rich people who may want some of this stuff, or maybe a museum wants to pony up some money if they really want a certain exhibit in their museum. Or your university that you work for should underwrite some of it. Yeah. But you get your funding, you've got your grad student assistance.

Maybe if it's going to be a really big dig, you put a flyer up at the local senior center, see if anybody wants to come help during the days. I don't know that the elderly would be good diggers, no? No, they would be awesome diggers, and here's why. It takes a lot of patience to excavate a site. When you excavate a site, you're basically coordinating it off. By the way, we've left out a really important point here. There's something called geophysical prospecting, which basically uses some pretty incredible

devices that measure differences in electromagnetism or electric conductivity in the ground, and then basically gives you a pretty picture back saying, here's something that's not rock. It's like a super advanced metal detector. Basically. But it can also detect other really nuanced stuff like paint. Yeah, it's an everything detector. Yeah, it's just good stuff. So you may have read a book that says, I think that this ancient site is here, but then you

don't just start coordinating off and digging, you do a survey of the site to look for stuff. Yeah, and see if it's likely that it might still be there. It's a huge step that if you miss, you're a terrible archaeologist. So I'm sorry we left that part out. Now that you've got a basically a subterranean map of the site, you coordinate off and you start digging usually by meter. And when you're digging by meter, you literally remove just one thin layer of that square meter at a time.

Yeah, because we said earlier, preservation is key and they were breaking things early on. And one way to not break things is to go super, super slow. Super slow. Just a little bit at a time. Yeah. And I know everyone has seen the footage of archaeologists on their hands and knees blowing things with little brushes and it is that meticulous.

Yes. It might drive some people crazy. It certainly would. Like construction worker guy probably doesn't want to be on an archaeological dig. No, but it's funny you bring that up because construction worker guys often find themselves in the midst of an archaeological dig. Construction yields a lot of archaeological evidence. For instance, in Miami recently, they came across a 2,000-year-old Indian settlement.

Oh, wow. Yeah, the Tequesta Indians had a little spot in the middle of what's going to be down in Miami's. No, like their newest development and the developers are like, fine, just take some pictures and let's get on with it. Right. And the locals are like, no, we need to preserve this better. So they're trying to figure it out.

But it happens a lot. Remember when we talked about the huge tunnel, the underwater tunnel they dug in Turkey? Oh, yeah. During construction of that, they ran into an ancient site. So they had to bring in archaeologists. That's what's called a rescue excavation, where it's going to be totally destroyed by a group of people who really could care less one way or another. What happens to these artifacts?

In the name of continued industry, so the archaeologist comes in, documents everything, the placement, all that stuff, dates it, and then that, what is documented from the excavation, that becomes the primary source for everybody else to follow. By excavating, you're destroying inherently. Yes. And each state in the United States has their own state archaeologists. If you go to do a construction project in Rome, let's say, get ready for patience. Because when you're trying to build something in Rome, I think they give out about 13,000

building permits a year. But they require an archaeological evaluation of each one. And some say it can cripple progress in Rome. Yeah. But if you've ever been to Rome, it's easy to appreciate the fact that they're doing that. Yeah, sure. It's built up against ancient, ancient ruins.

It's really, really wonderful how they preserved everything. Yeah, it's neat. That's the only place in Italy I've been, but it was awesome. I think someone else was complaining about how dirty it was, and I was like, it's been here a long time. Right, yeah. You know. No, it does have the funk of age over the whole thing, but yeah, it's still, you just

kind of... It's not going to smell like Montreal. Does Montreal smell good? I think Montreal is noted for being pretty clean for a city. You can see that. It's a fastidious city. That's what I've heard. You've never been to Canada?

You haven't? Nope. I grew up near the border, so I've been plenty of times. Yeah, and hey, early, early spoiler, we may be going out to Canada this fall. Crazy. To Vancouver. Yeah. So Vancouverites, listen up in the near future.

We may be coming to do some live show there this fall. Man, they're going to go nuts if we don't actually go through with this. Yeah, they won't remember. Okay. We're going to go though. Okay. All right, so we talked a little bit about the transition from grave robbing to archaeology. Looting archaeological sites is still a thing.

It didn't go away completely. So each country and each state in the United States, like everyone has their own way to deal with this stuff, there are a lot of archaeological acts that have been passed throughout the world to preserve things and to make sure there's not looting going on. But despite all their best efforts, it still happens and trying things like putting up a big sign, this is don't dig here, do not enter, is sometimes more of a welcome invitation. Yeah. So sometimes they get tricky.

In New York, they do things like environmentally sensitive, do not enter. So they'll try and trick folks into thinking that all you who enter will die. But people pay money for artifacts still and there is a black market. People pay money for artifacts and those people are very frequently called museums. Well, and private collectors, yeah, a lot of time. Apparently like dinosaur bones are super hot right now. Nicholas Cage has one that's contested. It was known to have been removed illegally from a site that was never officially recognized

by this couple that goes in and they're really good at finding dinosaur bones and then they sell them on the black market and apparently he's got a really awesome skull. Of course he does. He also has a house in New Orleans that was like a torture murder house in the 19th century that this priestess owned and that's his house in New Orleans, like the site of just blood baths. Wow. That's a big guy, man.

I know when he married Patricia Arquette, he did some crazy list of things or maybe she came up with a crazy list of things that he had to do to marry her and he did them all and it was a lot of, it was like a big stupid rich person treasure hunt, scavenger hunt. Yeah, it was more creative than that. Like what? Oh, I can't remember like find me a black rose. All these things that are hard to come by.

I got you. And he did it and he married her and they divorced her. So it's a happy ending. But the black market, sorry, back to it, if you're in Peru, they estimate they have lost about $18 million worth of artifacts and goods on the smugglers market and so they, their Institute of Culture, they register their historic sites and they require that all the collections are registered, they partnered with the International Council of Museums and basically all these international museums, they're trying to get together to thwart the

thriving underground archeological goods market, goods, collectible goods, sure, all right. But that brings us to the interesting point on who owns this stuff. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back.

The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand-new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all and now he's sharing the things he can't

unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life I think about this and what I want to say.

Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, professional podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's a great question for a very long time. It was museums because they were the ones who sent in professional looters, archaeologists at the time, to go in and basically rob a developing country of its antiquities and riches and history and culture, basically. In a lot of cases, the government in charge of the time was totally complicit. For example, when Yale sent in Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu and he came out with a lot

of artifacts from it. The Peruvian government was totally in on it at the time. I'm sure that the high officials were getting tons of kickbacks from Yale for it. But nowadays, a hundred years later, Yale is giving back its Machu Picchu artifacts. There's been a big move toward trying to get back things. Exactly. Because the Peruvian government has said, wait a minute, we're less corrupt than we were before and this is our cultural heritage and that belongs to us.

Yeah, you've had it for a hundred years, but there was ours for thousands of years. Give it back. It's not necessarily Machu Picchu for thousands of years, but there are plenty of antiquities that museums have had for a very long time, but really belong to the source country. Yeah, and that's a big sticking point. Every country, if you want to know who owns an artifact, if you find something, let's say, it's going to depend on where you are. Every municipality, every state, every country has their own laws, as far as finder's keepers

laws they call them. If you're in New Zealand, a lot of them are dated by time. If it's newer than a certain age, go ahead and keep it. If it's older than a certain age, you've got to talk to us about it. Found, not older when it was found. Well, it depends on what country. Some countries have a date on how old it is. I think the date is when it was found.

Yeah, certain countries, for sure, when it's found, certain it's the age of the object. It just depends on where you are. And the date of when it was found is usually the date that comes after whatever act was passed. Yeah, exactly. So in New Zealand, for example, if you found something prior to 1976, which is when the Antiquities Act of 1975 came into effect, you got to keep whatever you find, right? If you found it after 1976, then you have to alert the local authorities.

Right. In Sweden, that has some pretty interesting laws. They say if there's more than one object at a site, then you have to report it to the government. If it's just one thing that you find, you can keep it. And they have a finder's reward to encourage people to be honest about it. And if it's only the single object, you'd still have to report it if it's partially made of a precious metal or copper alloy.

But if it's, if you're in Sweden, you find an old wooden bowl, right? I love this example. And it's the only thing you find, then you get to keep it. Yeah. It's really interesting, though. The United States has the National Historic Preservation Act and the Archaeological Resource Protection Act. And they claim, I think the site must be at least 100 years old and remains must be related

to past human life or activity. That means you have to report it to the government. So it looks like really granular depending on where you are and what the law is. That's just two countries. There's something called treasure trove law, which is basically, it's this, but it has to do with finding a bunch of riches that are old enough that the owner is clearly now dead. No one can lay claim to it and that they were placed in a place where it shows intent for

them to be retrieved. Right. Like they were buried next to a tree or something like that rather than buried in a grave. Right. Because a grave would indicate that they were meant to stay there with a dead body. So if you find a treasure trove, all sorts of laws kick in. Like in the UK, in England, the Romans were all over that place. So people find hordes of Roman coins like when they're killing the ground in their farms.

Right. And it used to be like, well, that was yours. That's not the case any longer. Yes. Sunken treasure, that's a big controversial area too because a lot of those are private companies going after what they think is a lot of gold. Do you know that that's where the concept of the camp thing going down with the ship came from?

How's that? I was listening about the ferry disaster and whether or not the captain was supposed to stay on or the Costa Concordia. The tradition of the captain staying with the ship isn't that the captain's just, well, the ship's going down so I'm supposed to die. Right. The captain is supposed to stay on until the ship is basically totally under water. And then he can get off.

It has nothing to do with him dying. Right. He's supposed to stay on because under maritime law, as long as the captain's on the ship, it's not up for salvage, but the moment the captain leaves the ship, anybody who wants to go salvage the thing, that boat has been abandoned once the captain is off the ship. So the captain's supposed to stay on until it's basically not salvageable anymore. Oh, yeah. Then he can leave.

Got you. So if a ship were just to partially sink, then it's still salvageable and there's no captain, then you can claim it. Apparently. The captain is still, you know, on top of the front of the boat. If he's anywhere on the boat, barely hanging, sticking out of the water. He's like, I'm staying. So you have to stay too bartender.

That's interesting. Hit me up with a Bellini UNESCO in 1970, the UNESCO Convention established, tried to establish some international standards for cultural property, but here's the deal with all those international organizations. They can't demand that countries join, but they can encourage it and more than a hundred countries have ratified it so far. Yeah. The thing is, is like, even if you join and ratify it, you can still violate it.

Yeah, sure. International law is so toothless, it's ridiculous. But under that convention, though, it's like you said, it's usually, they usually side with the source country of the object as far as ownership goes. Which is good. And that seems to be the prevailing win now. Like if the source country wants to lay claim to something, you should give it back. It's part of a cultural heritage that got scattered to the wind in the 19th century when museums

were again employing basically professional grave robbers to go get them a bunch of stuff for the museum's collections. And now the tide's being reversed in a process called repatriation. Remember, we talked about that in the Shrunkin' Heads episode. Like those Shrunkin' Heads are being repatriated back to the QR. Yeah. And art is just something that worked for a long time up until the early 20th century. And that is basically when you dig up, let's say, excavate a site and you find a bunch

of great artifacts. The country itself keeps most of the stuff, but the digger can keep a couple of things. And they don't spell out exactly how many things because it wasn't like a law. But for a long time, if you like, you know, excavate a site and like, hey, I want to keep these three things, you can have the rest and the country's like, great, that works great. It's like sharing almost. Yeah.

And it's not almost. It's exactly sharing. And so we're talking about the black market being pretty hot for antiquities and artifacts. There's this group called the International Council of Museums that basically created a list. It's called the Red List that they put out, I think on a regular basis, but then they'll put out emergency ones too, when suddenly like a black market in a certain area heats up.

Right. And it's pictures of specific items and descriptions saying this item and things like it are most likely to be smuggled and illegally sold in the black market because there's a big market for them right now. It's really interesting to go check out on the almost like a most wanted list for artifacts. Yeah. But they're like all the different artifacts that they have are really, really cool to just kind of browse through and they have it by region and country and stuff like that.

Cool. What's it called? The International Council of Museums. You go to their website and look for the Red List. Those guys party too. You ever been to one of those conventions? Accidentally. Man, they are wild.

Yeah. If you remember an International Council of Museums convention, you weren't there. You didn't do it right. Yeah. All right. I think we should finish up with an interesting little bit about the Nazi party because Hitler and the gang were way into archaeology because they believed if they could find proof that Germans were the original Aryan peoples along with Thor and Odin, the Nordic gods, if they

could prove that we were the original peoples and we ran the earth, then that would give them the right to go in and take your country. Right. So they weren't just interested in things. They were interested in trying to prove that they owned the world. Pretty much, yeah, that they were descended from the Aryan race, which was the Proto-Indo-European group. Yeah.

The mythical. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that was, I was not 100% clear on that, like, are the Aryan race definitely exist? Well, I think the Nordic gods, yeah, I don't know about that. Well, they would be mythical, but they were the people who worshiped them. They were the Aryan race, right?

I don't know. That's a good question. So I think that there was an Aryan race, which we would call the Nordic or Germanic peoples. So I think whether or not what makes it mythical is the idea of whether it was some pure white race that made it some master race in the eyes of the Nazis. So it may have been a mythical people. We'd love to hear from you if you're an expert on early Proto-Indo-European cultures. It was there a group called the Aryans.

As far as the Nazis were concerned, yes, there was, and that the Nazis were the new version of that. Okay. Right? Yeah. For sure. And this started even pre-war in 1935. Himmler actually founded something called the, and this is German, of course, Anenobie.

That's what I'm going to call it, A-H-N-E-N-E-R-B-E. Don't you speak German? Yeah. It doesn't look like a German word. It's weird. Okay. Yeah, it does look a little French. And it was well known as the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society.

And one of Hitler's big plans was, you know, when he took control of Germany, he took control of the education system and everything, and he wanted to flood that education system with Nazi propaganda. And so they formed this, you know, they call it a think tank. But what they really did was a lot of archeological digs all over the world, like I said, trying to prove. I mean, we're talking Croatia, Greece, Russia, Iceland, North Africa, they're going everywhere trying to find traces of what they believe were ancient Germans in the original master

race. Right. And one of the places they went was Iceland, because apparently, as for tool, T-H-U-L-E, which was the seat of the Nordic gods, right? And they looked for something called the Hof, which was a place where they were supposedly worshipped by the Aryans. And they said, we found it, we found this cave, this mystical place of worship. And somebody else came along and said, no, this cave wasn't inhabited until the 18th

century. So not the Hof Nazis. And then the British and the Americans came in, occupied Iceland, and the Nazis were not able to come back. No. That's one example of their failed expeditions, right? Yeah. They had 18 archaeological expeditions total, and none of them bore fruit.

They were fruitless. They were fruitless. They didn't provide any information that the Nazis were the original master race, because they were not. That's right. They were just a bunch of terrible people. All right. I think you can say that.

Yeah. I'm taking a stand on Nazis. I dare someone to write in and defend the Nazis. Yeah. Do you have anything else? No. You beat me to the punch. Oh, OK.

No, I don't, man. And if you want to learn more about archaeology, How Stuff Works is a veritable library of articles on archaeology. Everything you could possibly need to know. Basically, you probably would get a degree if you read everything on archaeology. Not true. You could. OK.

And just type archaeology into the search bar, How Stuff Works, allow me to spell that for you. A-R-C-H-A-E-O-L-O-G-Y. Is that one of those you have to sound out in your head? No. Remember that was the first I was able to spell that word earlier? No. I remember, but I just...

No, I see it in my head. Oh, OK. I see the letters. I think everyone has those words still, though, as adults. You sound out that were difficult. One of mine, for some reason, is because I always, in my head, had to go P-E-C-A-U-S-E, and I still do that in my head. Mine is pretty much anything with the C-E-I.

Yeah. Spread. Oh, man. Those are not just words. And it's even got that accompanying rhyme, I, before, you, except after C, but anytime I see a C and there's I's and E's involved, I have to go back and correct myself, basically. That's called putting learning into practice. That's a dumb...

I'm a dummy. No. OK. Oh, speaking of dumb, I haven't yet, which means I can still go on forever. Go ahead. There are new t-shirts available for people who, like, don't be dumb. Yes. Josh is a Tony award-winning web series, which is...

You have me confused with Neil Patrick Harris again. I think it's great. I think anytime, if you're getting feedback where people are saying, this is the best thing I've ever seen, and other people are saying, I don't get it at all, or I hate you for making this, that means you're doing something genius. Yeah, I guess so. So, if you aren't familiar with Don't Be Dumb, you can check it out on our website or on our YouTube channel.

If you are familiar and you want a t-shirt, you can go to our store. If you go to stuffyshino.com, you can get to our store in the top navigation, and there are Josh sent me t-shirts. Are they? Yeah. That's great. Thanks. That's a good one.

But anyway, since I said all that, I imagine, Chuck, finally, it's time, at long last, for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Thieving Mailman. I think this is the one. Who is it? Sorry. Thieving Garbage Man. Oh, okay.

Hey, guys, listen to how tipping works, and have a funny story. A couple of years ago at Christmas, my mom wanted to leave our Garbage Man a nice tip. She says Garbage Man, by the way. We're not saying that, because I know sanitation workers. You're right. Proper term. Nice. Nicely done.

I should preface this by saying that our Garbage Man isn't like the typical city pickup guys. He has a small business, and he comes to collect people's trash at their garages with his pickup truck. They must live in the sticks. My parents have a long driveway, and don't want to drag the trash can to the end of the driveway, so they hired this guy. My mom puts some money and a card and a white envelope as the tip, and she didn't want to

tape the envelope to the trash bags for fear of it being thrown away by accident. Smart. Yeah. I'm going to give it to this iron horse head that we have sitting by Planter next to our garage doors. She attached an image, but I don't have it. Just imagine, you know. Sure, I've seen those.

That's the little ring through his nose. Yeah. Later that day when my mom was... That's a bowl. No, the horse heads, because... No, they have it on the side. Yeah, they do. It's on the side from their bridle.

I'm talking about this picture I saw, trust me. It had a ring through its nose? Yeah, it was like a knocker. Okay, I see. That kind of thing. So, later that day when my mom was... I love that. I looked at this picture and you're like, no, it didn't look like that.

No, you're wrong. Later that day... Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your lion eyes? Later that day when my mom was coming back home from running errands, she saw that the trash had been picked up and the horse head was gone. The garbage man must have assumed it was a gift for him as well, and he took the envelope

and the horse head. It wasn't valuable, but we also didn't want to give it away. We never got it back and never brought it up to the garbage man. But I laugh when I think about his reaction was probably, what the heck? They gave me this envelope and a horse head, and I just hope he put it in his house somewhere. So I hope you get a little laugh out of this. We did. It's from Emily Crawford.

Nice. Thanks a lot, Emily Crawford. That's good stuff. Somewhere, that sanitation worker has your family heirloom. Yeah. That was a good story. Agreed. You know what it reminded me of?

What? The greatest movie starring Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen ever made, Men at Work. I never saw that. What? I did not see it. That is a good movie. You need to see that. I know they're sanitation guys and they find something valuable probably that someone

else wants and so they're in trouble for it. You just wrote the script. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a, but all the hijinks that ensue in the meantime are hilarious. Great supporting cats too, including Chainsaw from summer school. Boy, man, I love your taste in movies. It runs the gamut. So was that it?

That's it. If you want to tell us a cute story about your family, we'd love to hear those. You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.discovery.com and join us at our home on the web, our place for great t-shirts, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want

to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

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