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The Dirt Podcast
The Dirt Podcast episodes
- The Dirt Caves In: LIVE! - Ep 126
If you were a pre-Homo sapiens hominin, the place to see and be seen was Africa in what is today colloquially known as the Cradle of Humankind. True to form, we're late to the party, but come along with us anyway for a tour of the cave sites that revolutionized paleoanthropology.
Thank you to everyone who came out to the live show!
Links
- When Did Homo Sapiens First Appear? (Discover)
- Oldest Homo sapiens bones ever found shake foundations of the human story (The Guardian)
- Scientists discover the oldest Homo sapiens fossils at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco (Phys.org)
- Caves of Hercules (Atlas Obscura)
- The Caves of Hercules – The Map of Africa (Barclays Travel)
- Skull Fossils in Cave Show Mix of Human Relatives Roamed South Africa (The New York Times)
- Contemporaneity of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early Homo erectus in South Africa (Science)
- Newly discovered fossil documents small-scale evolutionary changes in an extinct human species (Washington University in St. Louis)
- ‘Little Foot’ hominin emerges from stone after millions of years (Nature)
- World’s oldest camp bedding found in South African cave (Science)
- Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa (Science)
- 200,000 years ago, humans preferred to kip cozy (Science Daily)
- First Use of Poison (Archaeology)
- When the Sea Saved Humanity (Scientific American)
- Early Tools Were Born From Fire (Science)
- Ancient hominins used fire to make stone tools (Phys.org)
- South Africa’s Blombos cave is home to the earliest drawing by a human (The Convo)
- Wildnote
- TeePublic
- Timeular
1 hr 4 min - Dirt After Dark: Tiki Crazes and Volcano Sacrifices
In this super long, super exciting installment of Dirt After Dark, we pick up where we left off in our volcanoes episode and take a look at volcano-informed myth and culture in fact and fiction (and the things that fall somewhere in the middle) before jumping feet first into an exploration of the trope of volcano sacrifices. Plus, we tackle tiki culture and Amber finds a new favorite movie.
Current Eruptions (Smithsonian National HIstory Museum Global Volcanism Program)
The Golden Bough (Project Gutenberg) - Chapter 8: The Worship of Volcanoes in other Lands.
Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (via Google Books)
Yadnya Kasada festival - in pictures (The Guardian)
Here's what it's like to get thrown into a volcano (Popular Science)
The Unlikely Philosophy of Joe Versus the Volcano (Tor.com)
The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary - entry "tiki"
Tiki bars are built on cultural appropriation and colonial nostalgia. Where’s the reckoning? (Los Angeles Times)
Lovely Hula Lands: Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture (Border/Lines)
Is Tiki "Cultural Appropriation"? (Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Fantasy)
The Real and the Fake: Polynesian Culture and How We Perceive It (Critiki News)
On Culturally Thoughtful Tiki (Critiki News)
1 hr 30 min - Dirt After Dark: Tiki Crazes and Volcano Sacrifices
In this super long, super exciting installment of Dirt After Dark, we pick up where we left off in our volcanoes episode and take a look at volcano-informed myth and culture in fact and fiction (and the things that fall somewhere in the middle) before jumping feet first into an exploration of the trope of volcano sacrifices. Plus, we tackle tiki culture and Amber finds a new favorite movie.
Current Eruptions (Smithsonian National HIstory Museum Global Volcanism Program)
The Golden Bough (Project Gutenberg) - Chapter 8: The Worship of Volcanoes in other Lands.
Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (via Google Books)
Yadnya Kasada festival - in pictures (The Guardian)
Here's what it's like to get thrown into a volcano (Popular Science)
The Unlikely Philosophy of Joe Versus the Volcano (Tor.com)
The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary - entry "tiki"
Tiki bars are built on cultural appropriation and colonial nostalgia. Where’s the reckoning? (Los Angeles Times)
Lovely Hula Lands: Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture (Border/Lines)
Is Tiki "Cultural Appropriation"? (Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Fantasy)
The Real and the Fake: Polynesian Culture and How We Perceive It (Critiki News)
On Culturally Thoughtful Tiki (Critiki News)
1 hr 30 min - DNA: The Dirt, uh, Finds a Way - Ep 125
This year is the 20th anniversary of the first publication of the Human Genome Project, and the 10th anniversary of the Neanderthal Genome Project. Since both of these projects began, DNA research has changed what we know about the human story more than we could ever possibly have imagined. Come learn about a tiny fraction of this knowledge with us, and listen to our brains explode.
Links
- Protein Synthesis: an Epic on the Cellular Level (Internet Archive)
- Human Genome Project Information Archive 1990–2003 (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
- Human Genome Project FAQ (National Human Genome Research Institute)
- Game of chances: inheritance is a question of probability, not destiny (The Guardian)
- Why Race Is Not a Thing, According to Genetics (National Geographic)
- How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference (The Experiment Publishing)
- The Neanderthal DNA you carry may have surprisingly little impact on your looks, moods (Science)
- Neanderthal DNA highlights complexity of COVID risk factors (Nature)
- Neanderthal DNA in Modern Human Genomes Is Not Silent (The Scientist)
- Multiple lines of mysterious ancient humans interbred with us (National Geographic)
- Denisovan DNA in the genome of early East Asians (Max Planck Gesellscheft)
- The complete genome sequence of a Neandertal from the Altai Mountains (Nature)
- The Contribution of Neanderthals to Phenotypic Variation in Modern Humans (The American Journal of Human Genetics)
- Evidence found of Denisovans interbreeding with humans in Southeast Asia more recently than thought (Phys.org)
- The CRISPR-baby scandal: what’s next for human gene-editing (Nature)
- In a possible step forward for gene therapy, Stanford researchers made mice glow like fireflies (Stanford News)
- Neanderthal-like ‘mini-brains’ created in lab with CRISPR (Nature)
- 3 Human Chimeras That Already Exist (Scientific American)
- This Woman Is Her Own Twin: What Is Chimerism? (Live Science)
- The Case of the Woman Who Was Her Own Twin (Genetics Illustrated)
- Disputed Maternity Leading to Identification of Tetragametic Chimerism (New England Journal of Medicine)
- Wildnote
- TeePublic
- Timeular
1 hr - Volcanoes! - Ep 124
Let’s lean into our fear of pyroclastic flow and talk about the traces that volcanoes can leave in the archaeological record. Turns out, it’s a lot more than buried cities. We’ll also take a look at how volcanoes manifest in the myths and legends of various cultures.
Links
- Hawaiian Myths Tell A Story About Volcanic Activity At Kilauea (Forbes)
- Volcano Myths and Rituals (American Scientist)
- Why ancient myths about volcanoes are often true (BBC)
- The Harmful Pseudoarchaeology of Mythological Atlantis (Women Write About Comics)
- Santorini eruption: new theory says ‘pyroclastic flows’ caused devastating Bronze Age tsunamis (The Conversation)
- The A.D. 79 Eruption at Mt. Vesuvius (UCSD Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics)
- Tephrochronology and its application: A review (Quaternary Geology)
- Wildnote
- TeePublic
- Timeular
1 hr 11 min - The Good Old Days: Prehistoric Inequality - Ep 123
This week's episode is a listener-sponsored one! Ancient hunter-gatherers are often painted as egalitarian, with all members contributing to the needs of the group. But what does evidence from prehistory say about things like access to nutrition, or care for the sick or injured? Are there cases where some individuals were clearly treated differently from others? How far back can we go to find clues? Stay tuned, sleuths.
Links
- Did agriculture create inequality? (Scientific American)
- Hunter-getherer envy (SAPIENS)
- Issues with using modern forager groups as proxy for ancient ones (Evolutionary Anthropology)
- The earliest deliberate burial? (SAPIENS)
- Sunghir burials (SAPIENS)
- Different types of burials at Sunghir (Antiquity)
- Status-symbol scapulae? (Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences)
- Wildnote
- TeePublic
- Timeular
1 hr 25 min - Unboxing Boxgrove - Ep 122
This week, Anna introduces Amber to the site of Boxgrove, in what is now Sussex, England. It's one of the oldest known hominin sites in the UK, and features the remains of our early relative, Homo heidelbergensis. Join us to learn more about the Muddle in the Middle, the world's hardest jigsaw puzzle, and the molecular clock.
Links
- The man who died half a million years ago (Current Archaeology)
- We may now know what our common ancestor with Neanderthals looked like (New Scientist)
- Boxgrove Project Blog
- The Middle Pleistocene human tibia from Boxgrove (Science Direct)
- Flint formed in chalk (The Geological Society)
- Boxgrove: how we found Europe’s oldest bone tools – and what we learned about their makers (The Conversation)
- Europe’s Oldest Bone Tools Hint at Early Hominin Sophistication (Smithsonian Magazine)
- Wildnote
- TeePublic
- Timeular
45 min - Bonus Ep: Five Stars' Worth of Fun with One Star Archaeology
It's a bonus episode! Anna and Amber are joined by some of the wonderful folks at One Star Archaeology (Twitter: @1starchaeology, Instagram: @onestarchaeology) for dramatic readings of internet reviews of archaeological sites.
Contact
- Email the Dirt Podcast: [email protected]
Affiliates
- Wildnote
- TeePublic
- Timeular
31 min - Merry Hyksmas! With Dr. Chris Stantis - Ep 121
Seasons greetings! And by that we mean we're wrapping up 2020 by sitting down with Dr. Chris Stantis, who uses stable isotope analyses to learn how people lived in the ancient past. We discuss the real story of the Hyksos Dynasty during the Second Intermediate Period in Egypt. Were they the pushy invaders they've been made out to be? Or is there more to the story? (There's more to the story). Not only ALL THIS, but Dr. Stantis convinces Amber and Anna to love those pesky little atoms--stable isotopes!
Links
- Who were the Hyksos? Challenging traditional narratives using strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis of human remains from ancient Egypt (PLOSOne)
- The Foreigner as Scapegoat: Lessons from Ancient Egypt and Today (Chris Naughton dot com)
- Additionally, Dr. Stantis has the following recommendations for those interested in learning more about the Hyksos:
- The Ascendancy of the Kushite Kingdom of Kerma in the Post Middle Kingdom Era: Revisiting the Second Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt (Archaeological Research Facility, UC Berkeley)
- Dr. Danielle Candelora’s research on Hyksos and “race” in scholarship
- Wildnote
- TeePublic
- Timeular
1 hr 15 min - Show and Tell Abraq - Ep 120
This week, Amber takes Anna on a guided tour of her beloved Arabia. Learn about the varied mountains, deserts, and oases that are nowhere near as empty or inactive as Western explorers might have you believe. We examine the archaeology of Tell Abraq, get scammed by a guy named Ea-Nasir, solve the mystery of Magan (hint: not actually a mystery), and share insights from skeletal remains about community care and compassion thousands of years ago. Disappointingly, we still don't know what Dilmun onions are.
Links
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - Theatrical Trailer (YouTube)
- The Archaeology of Prehistoric Arabia: Adaptation and Social Formation from the Neolithic to the Iron Age (via WorldCat)
- The Seafaring Merchants of Ur (Journal of the American Oriental Society)
- Meet The Worst Businessman Of The 18th Century BC (Forbes)
- Ancient Magan: The Secrets of Tell Abraq (Ancient Ports - Ports Antiques)
- Before the Emirates: an Archaeological and Historical Account of Developments in the Region c. 5000 BC to 676 AD (from United Arab Emirates: A New Perspective)
- Lesley of Tell Abraq (Bronze Age 2400 - 2000 BC) (Sketchfab)
- Bioarchaeology of compassion: Exploring extreme cases of pathology in a Bronze Age skeletal population from Tell Abraq, U.A.E. (Digital Scholarship@UNLV)
- Qal’at al-Bahrain – Ancient Harbour and Capital of Dilmun (UNESCO)
- Looking for Dilmun (Archive.org)
- Young Woman With Disabilities Found In Artifact-Packed Bronze Age Burial (Forbes) - cn, images of human remains
- Wildnote
- TeePublic
- Timeular
1 hr 12 min
About The Dirt Podcast
From the publisher's feed
Join Anna and Amber; friends, archaeologists, and big nerds, for an exploration of the lives of people in the past.