Ancient HUMAN SKULL cup FOUND!

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to By Amara. This is a weekly news show where we'll discuss some of the weird, strange, and just downright odd things.

I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew. Sorry, that was very high. This week we're talking about did cavemen invent Lincoln Logs?

Spoiler alert, yes. A perfectly preserved 2000-year-old child shoe, and did our ancestors make objects using each other's bones? Spoiler alert again, also yes.

Anyway, we will talk about that more later, so let's get to it.

I bet you miss this shit. Hi, how are you? I as you can tell my voice is a little messed up.

So that's why this is sorry, I'm messing with my mic. I just need to stop. Hello.

I'm oddly chipper today, so I lost my voice a week ago, and I was going to record my podcast on time, finally, and I could not I couldn't hit certain notes. I still can't hit certain notes when I get a little higher.

This is going to be a great podcast. So Hopefully, I don't get too excited and then I'm like So I lost my voice Friday, last Friday, so, exactly 1 week ago. It's finally back, which is really nice.

I've been drinking a shit ton of tea. Holding up my mug in case you were listening to this, it's a skull. I really like it.

I use it year-round. It just happens to be Halloween time, which I'm very excited about, as you know, or if you know. You know?

Do you know? You know that you know. No.

I'm on some other shit today. Sorry.

But, I absolutely love Halloween, but basically like any day is Halloween for me. So, it doesn't really matter if it's Halloween time actually cause it just Halloween is a feeling. It's just like how people love Christmas.

I could do without Christmas to be quite honest. I can't do without Halloween. I love Halloween.

Halloween is like a state of mind. Anyway. So, it makes me think of the Misfits song, "Halloween".

By the way, I digress. Not by the way, I digress.

I take a week off and I'm just a hot mess, so. Sorry, I'm going to try to not clear my throat too much or if I do, I'm going to try to do it off-mic and edit it out so it's not super annoying, because it is very annoying. I'm annoying myself.

Anyway, yeah, Halloween, you can see the decorations if you're watching this, there's just like a little bit over here and I have shit everywhere, because like I said, I just love Halloween. I definitely need more decorations, though. I feel like I don't have enough.

We're super minimalist though, so I don't want to have too much stuff, but I've definitely limited myself to only having a tub and then like a little bag for like big kind of things like, I don't know if you can see that pumpkin over my shoulder, there's like a wire pumpkin that doesn't fit in the bins.

But, we are minimalists, so I try to not have too much shit. Basically, if something's paper or a light fixture, I allow myself to have it. That's basically it.

It's very nice, actually, because then it's not too much shit, but it's not stuff. Does that make sense? Who knows.

So, anyway, I said I lost my voice. It was because last week we were at a conference, and it was amazing. It was so much fun.

I genuinely, I haven't had that much fun basically since Dallas, I guess. I mean, I've had other fun, but this was just very fun. I like, I don't like a lot of people, but I like big social gatherings when people are there for a common goal or objective.

I don't know, it's like team building in a weird way, even though I didn't speak to like most people.

So, we went to FUBCon, which is a FUB is Follow Up Boss, which is like a CRM for real estate professionals. I'm not a real estate professional, but I work with a lot of them because I do social media videography for them. So, TLDR, we ended up going to FUBCon because Jeff is really good friend my Jeff.

I'm motioning because he's in his office. He's very good friends with the person who was running the whole event. They put on this entire conference and it was amazing.

It was so much fun. The VIP stuff was really amazing. They had this whole lounge that was like it looked like a 2D illustration, which, obviously, I love black and white.

I mean, you can just tell from everything. I love black and white and it looked perfect. It was like very on brand.

They absolutely crushed the conference. Every single person I spoke to genuinely loved it. So, it was just really fun.

There were a lot of speakers. The setup was fantastic. They just had a lot of different things going on and they had all the refreshments.

You know I love a good refreshment. So, I was I very much loved it. They had this epic final party.

I'm not going to talk too much, so don't worry, we'll get into the episode soon. But, they had this epic final party which was really fucking cool. They had like a live band, they had a DJ that they flew in from France, they had a light-up dance floor, so, you know, I get carried away.

When the music is going, when Pitbull turns on, he's very antithetical to every other type of music that I like, but there's something about Pitbull that I really enjoy.

He's my guilty pleasure and whenever he comes on, I just dance my little heart out. I think I danced the entirety of that after-party and that or the party, and then the after-party kept going until like 2:00 a.m. So, a little sleepy.

So, anyway, I lost my voice officially at that party. I lost it a little bit before just because I was talking constantly to people and I don't really talk to many people, so, lost my voice. It is back for the most part.

Little bit not, a little bit yes. Anyway, we also got to film with somebody that we filmed with in Dallas for the first time. We filmed with them again in L.A.

Because he lives there. He is just so lovely. Like, he just puts a little smile on my face because he's just he's one of those people that you just laugh with, no matter what.

So, he's just a genuinely great soul.

We also did some last-minute testimonials like videography work, so it was a very lucrative trip. It was very nice. Like, lucrative in that we got to like actually create stuff with people.

Like, money is also nice, but mostly I just really like making things with people. It's very weird, but I just enjoy it and getting to meet people. So, anyway, I always have a little bit of a comedown after we go to these conferences because of like constantly like with all these people and it's just like, "Oh, my god, it's a party and this is amazing." And then like it just stop the next day.

So, I don't know. I feel like I need to figure out what my system is for after we go to these conferences, because we have a couple more coming up now in the next couple weeks and months.

But I need to figure out what my solution is to the next day and the next week, because then it's just like I don't see anybody. So I need to figure out what my system is. If it's like a self-help group or something where I have all of us on like a group call, so we can just kind of hang out still, I don't know.

I need to figure it out. Also, if you're watching this, I just realized, it probably looks very different. I got a brand-new camera.

It is the Sony A7C II, and I'm very excited. I got like I put a pre-order in and everything. I needed a new camera just to make things a little bit more cinematic.

I was always using the Sony ZV-1, which I love. I still love that little camera. It does a fant- fantastic It does a fantastic job.

Mr. Bumbastic. It does a fantastic job, but this camera by far is wonderful.

I got to shoot with one of my clients last night I'm just like I got to shoot with one of my clients last night, and her stuff looked so cinematic, so it was perfect.

Still going to use my ZV-1 for like reels and stuff like that, just so it doesn't feel as like formal, I guess, or like polished, I don't know. Something for me to figure out. So, anyway, I think those are all my updates.

Sorry, Jesus, that was like motor mouth central. Clearly, you can tell I haven't fucking talked to anybody in a while. Sorry, Jeff.

I think that's basically it. So, I do have one story update. I like watching So, when I'm recording, Jeff tries to be very quiet, and I like watching him tiptoe back and forth, because like our kitchen is right there.

So, he's just tiptoeing down the little hallway and he's going like this, and he looks like Bigfoot. It's very funny. Anyway, so I try to not call it out, but I just called it out, because I find it funny.

So, I have one story update.

Last episode, I almost said last week, but last episode, we talked about the Pokémon Van Gogh Museum. Okay, I can't pronounce it properly, because that is going to make me cough the whole time, so Van Gogh is where we're going, because I can't get in the back of my throat. That sounds dirty.

Never mind. So, we talked about the Van Pokémon and Van Gogh Museum collaboration, which you can listen to that episode, blah, blah, blah, I talk all about it. Basically, in that episode, just as like a super brief summary, there was a little teaser video and then it was like, "Oh, my god, what's happening?" And you saw all the different like Sunfloras and stuff, and it was Eevee and Pikachu, I think I recall.

Sorry, a lot has happened in two weeks, so I'm like, "What did I even talk about?" Basically, it was just a promise that there was going to be some exclusive merchandise, which there is. It opened on I was seeing September 28th and September 29th. I think it was officially September 29th.

Feel the heat from my tea and it feels really nice. So September 29th is when this whole thing like opened at the museum, and a wide variety of different merchandise was sold at the museum in the gift shop. Completely sold out within 4 hours, apparently, which, like, duh, obviously, it's going to.

There wasn't too much promotion of it, but I mean, if enough people find out and if enough people are nuts, then of course they're going to go for it. I mean, I would even probably go.

So, there's you can actually look it up on eBay if you just type in what, Van Gogh Museum Pokémon? I think I actually just typed Van Gogh Museum and then all the stuff came up. So, there's like a little puzzle that has a Snorlax in Van Gogh's painting "Bedroom in Arles", and then there's the wheat field with just like then there's the Sunflora little sleeves.

There's just so much stuff. But the most coveted piece by far is this little Pikachu and it's modeled after Van Gogh's painting "Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat". This is Pikachu with grey felt hat.

It is fucking adorable. It is the cutest little thing. I don't know why, I just love it so Look at He's just sitting there like all cute with his little hat.

Stop, it's so cute.

So, anyway, this is one of the most coveted items because it's a super rare collectible card that you can only get when you go in person at the museum. So, you can find this on eBay right now from anywhere between $25 and $1,000. It's weird because I don't really trust the 2,500 $2,500, Jesus, the $25 cards because I'm like, "Is this actually real?

Is this a reproduction of some sort?" So, I don't know, aim a little bit higher. I'm not giving you any just do whatever you want, but just be aware, there are $25 ones, and it might not be good, so just FYI. So, like I said, according to a spokesperson from the museum, all merchandise sold out within 4 hours.

From now on though, they're actually I guess they didn't limit how much merchandise each individual person could buy, which is a little weird. So, from now on, purchases will be limited to one of each item one of each item per person and then they'll soon be available in the museum's online shop. So, if you want to get your own stuff, you totally can in a little bit, it looks like.

So, maybe don't buy from eBay just yet or do, I guess, if you want. I don't know. You do you.

It's your life, you figure it out. So, but like I teased, the cute little sorry, my chair was very squeaky. The cute little Pikachu card won't be available for purchase.

Won't be available for purchase, so that is something that you can only get in person if you do the Pokémon Adventure Treasure Hunt, and it's you receive it upon exiting the museum. So, I kind of feel like I want to go and experience it, but that's like a lot to just go to see this Pokémon exhibit. However, you can do it if you feel like it, or you can just buy one online if you just purely want the card, so that is up to you.

That is my only update, so let's get straight into the show before I cough, because I'm about to.

I miss dancing to my little intro music, or my outro intro outro interstitial? Anyway, new archaeological evidence I just need to start. I was looking at you and I wasn't even thinking, I was just like off in my own little world trying to think of words.

Anyway, new archaeological research has revealed the oldest known wooden structure, and it's nearly half a million years old. Yeah, it's pretty fucking old. Oh, and even better, it's human created.

The researchers did a series of tests to actually prove that it's human created and it wasn't just some natural logical natural logical Am I just making things up? I think so. It wasn't just some natural thing that happened to the wood over time, but we'll talk about that in a second.

So, what the fuck are we even talking about? Archaeologists excavated a structure in Central Africa. This was upstream from the Kalambo Falls, which is near Zambia's border with Tanzania.

They excavated this back in 2019, and they're just now publishing their research. Academia moves very slow.

This is basically just It's like a super simple structure. It's just two interlocking logs with a notch deliberately carved, so, I guess it's more like this. I'm making hand gestures to the camera if you're listening to this.

So, it's like an interlocking structure so that they fit together, which is basically just Lincoln Logs. So, did they invent Lincoln Logs? Kind of, maybe.

It's just very simple, but it's really cool. We're going to talk about all the different reasons why that's really cool and it's actually like you might not think of this as being the I'm just shut up, me. Okay, so it's very cool for a variety of reasons, so stick around because it's really interesting.

So, the team, they published their findings a few weeks ago in the scientific journal called Nature, and they presented evidence that the work had actually been constructed 40 476,000 years ago. I just blew a lot of air, sorry. Thousand This is going to turn into an ASMR episode.

Am I drunk? I don't know why I can't talk. Anyway, within the same article, in the same journal, the team published a separate story, it looks like, or a separate article, which is really interesting, basically chronicling how their research went, which I found very meta and I actually very much enjoyed it because they basically made their own documentary.

So, they state about the discovery, quote, "On the first day of a 2019 excavation, the researchers slid down a slope to the shores of the Kalambo River and noticed a piece of wood jutting out of a cliff face. Excavations of the waterlogged site turned up several pieces of wood that seemed to have been modified, as well as one big surprise," I don't know why that place that piece just made me giggle, "a 1.4 m-long log that had tapered ends and a deeply carved notch where it rested on another large piece of wood." So, these notches suggest deliberate design.

Like, this is actually a deliberate thing that these people created. So, the researchers, like I said, to understand what the hell is even going on, like, is this natural? Was this human-made?

What is it? They did a series of tests to see if this was, like I said, naturally occurring or if these ancient peoples used stone tools to hack away at the wood. They used a wide variety of different woods, like one of them was elm, I think, they listed in the study.

You can go read about it, it's really fascinating. It was it was very science-y though, so I was like, "I don't know what I'm reading." Basically, they took a bunch of different types of wood that kind of were similar enough to this wood I don't think they Correct me if I'm wrong in the comments, but I genuinely don't think they actually noted what type of wood was used, either.

So, they used a bunch of different like similar type woods that are like similar enough to this structure to test it, and then they hacked away using stone tools and stuff like that to see, is this naturally occurring or was this actually a human-made thing? I think they also found two cut marks on the wood, so then that suggests that this was done by tools.

So, you might be asking, why the hell is this even important? Why do we need to know any of these ancient things, which I always say that, and you probably don't even ask that, but this is why this is important. So, a professor from the University of Liverpool, which is where these items went, states that the label "Stone Age" is now antiquated because of these findings.

He said that, "this shows our early ancestors," quote, "used their intelligence, imagination, and skills to create something they'd never seen before, something that had never previously existed," which is really fucking cool, oh, end quote. So, this now highlights that hominins, which were the early relatives of Homo sapiens, who it's believed created these, had the ability to chop down trees and make digging tools and larger structures.

And like I said, this is super extraordinary for a wide variety of reasons, mainly though, because this is organic matter. Like, organic matter does not exist. I've talked about this in many different episodes, but organic matter gone immediately unless it's perfectly preserved.

So, it looks like the dirt that was surrounding this structure is actually what helped keep it like intact and preserved and like perfectly good. It also helps rewrite the narrative that ancient peoples were just bumbling idiots who had no idea what the fuck they were doing and they had no creative anything. Like, I think a few episodes ago, we talked about caves in France, I believe, is where it was, where you could literally see finger drawings and finger paintings that were done by early peoples, like hundreds of thousands of or thousands at least of years ago, which is fascinating.

Like, there is this creative impulse in all of these humans and human hominins and all those things. Not homonyms, hominins. And just seeing that human creativity just exists in all facets, I don't know, that gets me very excited, because, obviously, I love art.

It also which, this is what I found most interesting, which this researcher brought it up, is that these early peoples were sophisticated cognitively Sorry. That these early peoples were cognitively sophisticated enough to have some type of language, because if you think about it, you can develop a plan, the fact that they could develop this complex plan to go like this with wood is amazing.

But then, you have to be able to tell someone, "This is my plan, and this is what I'm trying to," I don't know, and just work together, that is very fascinating. So, there's some sort of communication, whether like an actual verbal language, or some series of sounds or drawings or whatever it is, that is very fascinating.

So, you get to kind of figure out, okay, what was the evolution of coming up with these different things and communication styles and all that fun, wonderful stuff.

So, this might be the oldest known wooden structure. However, there's also the earliest known wooden artifact. I just thought this was interesting.

The earliest known wooden artifact is a 780,000-year-old fragment of polished plank that was found at the site of, and apologies for my mispronunciation, Gesher Benot Ya'akov in Israel. And then the oldest known tools for foraging and hunting are believed to date back to 400,000 years ago. But this specific thing is amazing because everything else that was found was like tiny-ish.

This is a whole ass structure. Like, I mean, it's just two pieces, but it's big. Like, this is big.

It's very I don't know, it's interesting. So, what was this structure? Like, what the fuck is this?

Why What is this? For now, it's believed that this was actually possibly part of a walkway or like a wooden platform that was used as a walkway to keep food or firewood dry, or perhaps that it served as a base for building a dwelling upon. So, whatever it was for though, like I said, 100% human-created, or it's believed, rather, I should say believed.

What's also interesting, too, is that in addition to the structure, researchers also found a wedge, digging stick, That's what my nickname in high school. Oh, no, that was bad. Cut log, and notched branch and a notched branch.

Notched branch. Hello, I'm looking for notched branch. This is off the rails.

So, they found, in addition, a wedge, digging stick, cut log, and a notched branch. So, extra wooden things. So, these wooden pieces were air-freighted from Zambia to the University of Liverpool, where they were tested using luminescence.

Apparently, these items were so old that radiocarbon dating techniques didn't work on them, so that's why they used luminescence. And luminescence dating involves measuring the natural radioactivity in minerals in the fine sediment that encases the wood to figure out when it was last exposed to light, so sort of an imperfect practice, but still interesting nonetheless.

So, this research ultimately put it around 476,000 years old.

Then these wood items went through light conservation work before being returned to Zambia for analysis at the Livingstone Museum. So, that's just pretty fucking sweet. I don't know.

I just I find that so interesting, and especially something that old still exists, it can just provide a wide array of information. And especially, I think the language thing more so spoke to me, the No pun intended. The communication is really interesting because you're like, "Oh, that's cool." Like, it's a pretty simplistic design, but thinking about the complexities around that and trying to like speak your thoughts as I'm having trouble right now to other people to be like, "Hey, I want to make this." That's just so fascinating to me.

So, anyway, onto our next story after I drink some tea.

Archaeologists have uncovered an extremely well-preserved, oddly well-preserved, shoe from a child that dates back to about 2,000 years ago. This Iron Age shoe was uncovered in Austria in the, apologies for mispronunciation, Georgenberg mine in Dürrnberg along Austria's northwestern border with Germany. This area is full of prehistoric mining sites that archaeologists have been excavating since 2001.

This specific area is part of a very large scale prehistoric mining operation that actually was like a rock salt mine. Salt had high value, since it could help preserve food. So, this was a very productive sort of area.

And so a lot of different trade was going on and things like that. And in addition to preserving food, it just made it taste way better. So, it's believed also, too, which is really interesting, that this salt is what helped preserve this shoe among a bunch of other items, which we'll talk about in a second, which some of it's a little weird, but, you know, I like weird.

This shoe roughly compares to a European size 30 shoe or roughly a US size 12 children's shoe and is made of either flax or linen. So, again, it's a piece of organic matter, which, again, is why it's so cool that it existed, because organic matter doesn't last. So cool!

But, yeah, the salt is believed to have preserved this, which is just awesome.

Anyway, in addition to it being really interesting that it actually survived to this day and is extremely well-preserved, it's also interesting because this provides a different context to how the mining operation worked, where, of course, you would have adults working in the mine underground. But now it's actually believed that children may have been alongside these adults working in the mines underground.

And like I said, like there isn't too much more research because it's still kind of like an ongoing thing. But like I said, a few other things have been found that have been remarkably well-preserved down there, including half a wooden shovel, a piece of fur with lacing, which is believed to be like part of a hood, a few other fabric remnants, and preserved feces, which is remarkably well preserved, also.

And from this shit, researchers were able to determine that these miners suffered from intestinal parasites. Yummy. Those poor people.

That's basically it for this story. But finding these items has also helped researchers estimate how many people would have worked on a crew at one time. So, now it's believed to be anywhere between 30 and 60, I guess because of the variety of different items, and then maybe just the amount of shit that was I have no idea.

I'm not a scientist. I just talk about these things. I'm not actually out there in the field scooping up the ancient poop and stuff like that.

But, it's just very interesting.

So, I guess I should explain what the shoe actually looks like. So, it's like this little it looks like you would just slip your foot directly into it. So, it's like a little scoop, almost like a what's like a like lacrosse kind of I don't know, that's a really bad example.

But, it's just like a little like crescent kind of shape, and then it looks like the laces are actually on it, so it probably had like, I don't know, bone or stone or some other sort of wrapping mechanism that wrapped these like triangle pieces together, I guess. Just look it up. I'm doing a shit job trying to explain this, but it just looks very soft and like it would be comfy.

I'm actually shocked that this just would exist, period, and that it's actually still intact. But anyway, okay, so, onto our last and final story. I always do that, third and final story.

Neolithic Artifacts Made From Human Skull Cups

Jesus.

I wanted to end with a pretty fucking metal story. Don't know what to do with Grandma or Grandpa when they go? Take note from our Neolithic ancestors and turn their skulls into a cup.

I didn't even plan this. Holy fuck. This is not intentional.

I didn't even think this through. I was just like, "I just want to have tea." Well, I actually, I'm missing the part that they used, so there you go. Anyway, that was very unintentional, but I just realized it.

So, our Neolithic ancestors repurposed the bones of the dead to create everyday functional tools, and we're going to talk about a couple of those in just 1 second, but first, I want to provide context to why and how, and all those various different things. I'm actually a big fan of this, I think, for a variety of reasons, just because when you're dead, you're just taking up space, you know?

Unless you're doing a green burial. Excuse me. Unless you're doing like a green burial or something and you're contributing to the Earth, because now how it works, like you're in a coffin and then maybe you're in a vault or you're in a mausoleum or whatever.

And if you if you don't like talking about the morbid or like death or something like that, I'd probably stop listening, just because I find it very fascinating, so I'm going to talk ad nauseam. But, basically, it's so unnatural how we put bodies into the ground, and especially with all the chemicals and formaldehyde and shit like that.

So, this is very unnatural, but I really like this repurposing, actually, because then it's like, "Well, no, you're not just taking up space. I'm actually going to use your femur to make a spoon or something." I don't know. I really like it.

That's not what happened, but it's just interesting.

Okay, this is what happened. In a recent study, archaeologists found that Neolithic societies in Spain repurposed the bones of the dead to create functional objects. So, this is memento mori at its finest.

They've recently just published their findings, so they published them last month in the journal PLOS ONE, and in their research, they identified 12 individuals, so 12 skeletons, buried in Andalusia's Marmoles Cave, and they used radiocarbon technology to date the bodies. So, these were from somewhere between the 5th and 2nd centuries BCE, suggesting what, 3 centuries that people were burying people within this cave, which is really interesting because then it serves that it shows that this location had some sort of significance for funerary rights, which we'll talk about a couple different hypotheses in just a second.

So, they examined 411 skeletal fragments from this cave, and about 130 of them had marks on them.

What do these marks mean? They believe that this suggests human intervention. Still, what the fuck does that mean?

It means that they the bones themselves were either cleaned and/or manipulated by humans. So, there are little scratch marks on them, meaning that the bone marrow was taken out, the we'll talk more about the skull in a little bit, but basically that the brains were scooped out, any sort of organic matter within the skeleton was scooped out purposefully, which is really fascinating.

So, you might be thinking, too, "Oh, well, maybe it's because they were cannibals and they wanted to eat the human remains and stuff like that." Could be, scholars don't really See, see, there's that note I can't hit. It could be, but scholars are basically saying, "No, that doesn't really seem right," especially given the context of these other two instances.

So, in two instances of note, the bones were clearly repurposed. So a tibia, so, like, your shin bone, just to put it simply, was transformed into a pointed tool, and then a skull was turned into a cup. So, within that skull, they have a whole graph of the different like incision marks and stuff like that, or like the different scrapings.

So in the skull, they actually scooped it out. Like, they said not peacefully, but just gently, it was removed, all of this different stuff. So, it does show some respect for the body and things like that.

It's really fascinating.

Additionally, they also found 10 loose teeth, 47 teeth that are still attached to their respective jaw fragments, and then a bunch of other additional bone fragments like a sternum, a patella, foot phalanges, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But these two were like the main notable instances of repurposing. They were also able to surmise that it appears that there were seven adults and five non-adults that like these skeletons belong to, and then, apparently, they ranged in age from less than 19 years old up to about 50 years old, so like kids to adults, essentially, is how it was framed.

And then obviously male and female. Similar objects have been uncovered in other caves along the Mediterranean, so this isn't just an isolated instance, which is really fascinating. In these other caves, you do see both like manipulated and non-manipulated bones, so like turning a skull into a cup and shit like that.

You see instances of that in other places, but not so much in other ones. It just it varies. There is an emphasis though in these specific caves on co-mingled skeletons.

So, burying everybody together within this cave. Now, why would that be the case? Like why would you be burying people together in a cave?

That's kind of what the research is leading to right now. It's like, "Okay, well, why did all these different things occur? Why are they repurposing the bodies, or like the skeleton?

Why are they putting everybody together in a cave?" A few different reasons are kind of hypothesized, but, obviously, we'll never 100% know. One really intriguing thing is that this really does shift the ideology about the human body and death and how we interact with it, and how this has changed drastically. I mean, we don't put people in caves anymore, we put them underground, so, kind of trying to or in a variety of different formats, not just that, but like funeral pyres, all that kind of stuff.

It's just interesting to see how people navigate that throughout history. Besides like the obvious functional reason of putting bodies in the cave is like the hygienic purpose, or like the decaying and stuff like that. I told you, if you get squeamish, don't listen to this.

But just putting them in the cave so then it's like you don't have to see or smell or hear or whatever, like all the different sounds that happen, it's just over there and like you don't it's just in there. Or, it could also be kind of a more sentimental or symbolic reason. So like, it's dark, it's a restful place to go in a cave.

So, you're putting these bodies in there to rest, to hang out, just to go to sleep essentially forever. So, I don't know, I thought that was a very beautiful, poetic sort of reason. It could just be our own It's hard because we always will have our own time period that is emphasizing how we interact with and like how we think about like Marie Antoinette, that movie by Sofia Coppola.

I love it. I love Sofia Coppola, but any sort of historic not just calling her out, but any sort of historical period piece is obviously going to have our stink all over it, because it can't just be perfectly to 18th century France. Otherwise, we'll have no fucking idea what's going on, and we might not be into it as much.

So, anyway, I digress, but basically, we're always going to be tainted with our own current time period, and that's just what happens, so, I just really like the symbol symbolism, Jesus, the symbolism of having it be this nice dark place for people to rest and kind of making it more of a like community center in a way, I guess.

I don't know, I feel like that's how a cemetery should be in general.

Basically, at the end of the day, researchers are hoping to be able to better understand how and when cave burial shifted within this region, and then when it became more common to use underground, or various different things that happened in the time period, I don't know. I need to do more funerary research, because I find it fascinating.

So, anyway, thank you for listening to this episode of By Amara. If you weren't grossed out, I hope not, because it wasn't like that graphic, but if you were, sorry, I guess. It's just what happens, so feel like it or not, it's going to happen to you.

So, anyway, that was a shitty way to end this episode. But, I love you. If you like this episode, please be sure to like it.

Hopefully, I have my voice 100% back next week, so then I can hit certain vocal ranges without it being obnoxious or coughing my lungs out. So, if you like this episode, please be sure to like it, subscribe if you liked it, if not, I'm so sorry, and I hope you enjoy your life, and I think that's it. So, I'm Amara Andrew, never stop creating.