Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marshuker Radio Eye and today I will
Speaker 1: be reading National Geographic Magazine dated December twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
Speaker 1: for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
Speaker 1: make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
Speaker 1: now for the first article titled Resurrecting Notre Dame by
Speaker 1: Robert Kunzig. Five years after a blaze nearly destroyed it,
Speaker 1: France's most famous cathedral is reopening. Here's how the astonishing
Speaker 1: restoration was pulled off and how a sense of sacredness
Speaker 1: was rekindled. The fire that came close to destroying the
Speaker 1: Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris started under the roof
Speaker 1: in the ancient wooden attic near the base of the spire.
Speaker 1: It began a little after six p m. On April fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, the Monday of Holy Week, six days before Easter.
Speaker 1: Inside the church, a mass was under way. Whipe and
Speaker 1: I had arrived in the city the day before, and
Speaker 1: at around seven that Monday evening we just happened to
Speaker 1: be passing by from the window of our cab on
Speaker 1: the poon Saint Michel. We caught sight of a flickering
Speaker 1: patch of orange on the roof. Minutes later, stopped in traffic,
Speaker 1: we saw flames shoot up the wooden spire. This belief
Speaker 1: gave way to shock. Notre Dame was really burning. No
Speaker 1: cathedral is more important to France or to the world.
Speaker 1: For more than eight hundred years, Notre Dame has stood
Speaker 1: at the center of French life and has been the
Speaker 1: setting for historic events, both religious and secular. In twelve
Speaker 1: thirty nine, King Louis the Ninth, also known as Saint Louis,
Speaker 1: delivered what was purported to be Jesus Crown of Thorns
Speaker 1: to the cathedral. In nineteen forty four, as German bullets
Speaker 1: were still flying outside, General Charles de Gaul attempted a
Speaker 1: mass to celebrate the liberation of Paris. Through it all,
Speaker 1: Notre Dame largely escaped the bombs and blazes that ravaged
Speaker 1: other cathedrals. Wind of stability in the Sea of change.
Speaker 1: It became one of the world's most visited monuments, as
Speaker 1: well as a place millions told sacred. When we returned
Speaker 1: to the scene later that evening, the fire had fallen
Speaker 1: and the lead roof had melted from the darkness On
Speaker 1: the right bank. We gazed at the stone gable of
Speaker 1: the north transept, and through the small rose window we
Speaker 1: saw the flames consuming the oak roof crosses on the
Speaker 1: banks and bridges of the Seine. Thousands had gathered to watch,
Speaker 1: Drawn to the catastrophe, into the moment of communion. People
Speaker 1: were spreading the news on their phones. Some were singing
Speaker 1: the how Mary. We were visitors, but for most of
Speaker 1: the crowd this was home and a piece of their
Speaker 1: hearts seemed to be dying. Now five and a half
Speaker 1: years later, Notre Dame has been brought back to life.
Speaker 1: In early December, the Archbishop of Paris is scheduled to
Speaker 1: celebrate a festive Mass in the restored church that week.
Speaker 1: The great doors will open to the public and offer
Speaker 1: a measure of healing to what has been a public drama.
Speaker 1: National Geographic was granted special access to the years of
Speaker 1: work by architects, craftspeople and scientists that has led to
Speaker 1: this moment. In the summer of twenty twenty one, I
Speaker 1: returned for the first time since the fire, as the
Speaker 1: reconstruction was about to begin. This past summer, I went
Speaker 1: back again to witness its final stage, and also to
Speaker 1: learn about the clergy's plan for Notre Dame, I came
Speaker 1: to appreciate that the great lengths thousands of people have
Speaker 1: gone to not only to preserve this ex was a
Speaker 1: medieval monument, but also to revive it as a living church.
Speaker 1: There had never been a doubt that Notre Dame would
Speaker 1: be rebuilt, but what form would it take? After the
Speaker 1: fire of French President Imal Immanuel Macron decreed that the
Speaker 1: cathedral should be restored more beautiful than ever. He set
Speaker 1: an ambitious goal to have the work completed by twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four and financed by the eight hundred forty six
Speaker 1: million euros that have been donated since the disaster. The
Speaker 1: crow suggested that something structural we knew would be nice
Speaker 1: instead of the same old spire. Architects responded eagerly with
Speaker 1: far fetched ideas for a glass roof or a crystal spire.
Speaker 1: Preservationists were appalled, including Chief Architect of Historic Monuments Indipe Villeneuve,
Speaker 1: who at the time of the fire was already leading
Speaker 1: a renovation of parts of Notre Dame. From Villeneuve's perspective,
Speaker 1: adding a modern spire would have been like giving Mona
Speaker 1: Lisa a nose job, whereas restoring Notre Dame as it was,
Speaker 1: architectural historian Jean Michael Gnawed told me back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, with limestone, oak and lead, would be a
Speaker 1: cathartic act, a way to purge the grim memory of
Speaker 1: that night and to grieve the loss of the original structures.
Speaker 1: In the end, the preservationists won. Notre Dame has been
Speaker 1: rebuilt exactly as it was before the fire, and as
Speaker 1: it was left in the nineteenth century by Eugene Emmanuel
Speaker 1: voile Le Duc, a pioneer of restoration. We don't have
Speaker 1: the right to touchet were restoring it, Villeneus says, we
Speaker 1: leave no trace of our passage. And yet the inside
Speaker 1: of the cathedral to anyone who has visited before, will
Speaker 1: seem utterly transfigured, righter than any person alive has ever
Speaker 1: seen it. Walls, stained glass, paintings, and sculptures have all
Speaker 1: been cleaned and restored all at once for the first
Speaker 1: time since the nineteenth century. Visitors will be stupefied, awestruck
Speaker 1: by the interior of the cathedral, said Philip Schulst, president
Speaker 1: of the Special Public Authority overseeing the restoration. It will
Speaker 1: be a shock, but the interior will be new in
Speaker 1: another way. While the building is owned and managed by
Speaker 1: the French state as a protected historic monument, the interior furnishings,
Speaker 1: which were extensively damaged in the fire, were for the
Speaker 1: most part not his store, and they belonged to the
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Diocese of Paris. Church officials chose to undertake
Speaker 1: a complete new decoration. The cost is small in the
Speaker 1: context of the overall restoration, but it will have a
Speaker 1: big effect on how visitors experienced the church. Early this
Speaker 1: past summer, I paid a visit to a foundry in
Speaker 1: the Rhine Valley to see some of the church's new furnishings.
Speaker 1: There I met Judome Bargey, a sculptor and designer who
Speaker 1: had been commissioned by the diocese to create a new
Speaker 1: altar and other of the churchical objects. In the furnace room,
Speaker 1: we watched two workers in visors and heavy aprons decant
Speaker 1: molten white hot bronze into a series of molds. Rough
Speaker 1: unfinished sections of Barguet's new baptismal font sat on the
Speaker 1: floor nearby. His altar stood in the next room, waiting
Speaker 1: to be polished. Working with clay models, he explained he
Speaker 1: had searched for shapes that felt simple and immutable. The
Speaker 1: bronze altar is massive and books rooted to the spot,
Speaker 1: yet its curved sides above a pair of uplifted arms.
Speaker 1: The hope is that it will speak not only to
Speaker 1: the faithful, but also to the larger number of tourists
Speaker 1: who are unfamiliar with the policism or even Christianity. You
Speaker 1: have to understand, Barday said, we have to understand that
Speaker 1: we're talking about the sacred. A week later, when I
Speaker 1: walked into the nave of the church and found it
Speaker 1: hard occurs to appreciate the beauty of the place, who
Speaker 1: was still a busy construction site. All around us, workers
Speaker 1: were dismantling scaffolding, stringing electrical cable, polishing the marble floor.
Speaker 1: Our small group made our way deeper into the cathedral,
Speaker 1: creaning our necks to take into soaring vaults, and crossed
Speaker 1: the transept into the choir at the east end of
Speaker 1: the church. In the side chapels, there we could see
Speaker 1: the sumptuously refreshed wall paintings which date to Voile Yu
Speaker 1: Duke's nineteenth century restoration. Outside one chapel, a lone restorer
Speaker 1: knelt on the stone, her back turned to the soil
Speaker 1: of activity. She was applying dabs of pink with a
Speaker 1: fine brush to a column painted with trefoils. In this
Speaker 1: confined space, some two hundred fifty different companies employing the
Speaker 1: two thousand workers have managed to collaborate in work in
Speaker 1: sequence over the span of the project. It functions because
Speaker 1: people are happy and crowds to be working at Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: Jos explained. We walked outside and then entered an elevator
Speaker 1: that carried us through the scaffolding to the top of
Speaker 1: the north transept, where we emerged in the church's attic.
Speaker 1: We were above the sailing vaults, now in a place
Speaker 1: not accessible to the public, in the part of the
Speaker 1: church that was most ravaged by the fire, and where
Speaker 1: much of the work done over the past five years
Speaker 1: had been concentrated. Looking up, we saw blue sky through
Speaker 1: timber trusses that hadn't yet been covered with lead roofing.
Speaker 1: We picked our way through crowded walkways to the crossing
Speaker 1: where the two arms of the transept meet the knave
Speaker 1: and the choir. The base of the collapsing the spire
Speaker 1: had plunged through the stone vaults. Here then crushed the
Speaker 1: main altar on the floor below. Stonemasons had only recently
Speaker 1: closed the jagged hole in the vaults. The smell of
Speaker 1: fresh wood walked in off the oak beams and spiral
Speaker 1: stairs of the new spire. Pressing on into the attic
Speaker 1: of the nave, we entered the new forest of triangular
Speaker 1: oak roof trusses. To replicate the original medieval roof, the
Speaker 1: construction workers had relied on ancient techniques. The hand hued
Speaker 1: the massive timbers with traditional hand axes, which had themselves
Speaker 1: been forged by hand. The beams were then fixed in
Speaker 1: a complicated lattice with pegged mortise and tenin joints. One
Speaker 1: of the carpenters, Honked Silver, an American who moved to
Speaker 1: France for this project, grabbed a protruding peg and hung
Speaker 1: his weight from it to demonstrate its strength. Silver directed
Speaker 1: my eye down the nave along the center line of
Speaker 1: the new trusses. The line was slightly curved. That deformity
Speaker 1: had been in the medieval original, and the architects decided
Speaker 1: to replicate it. Silver explained that it made things even
Speaker 1: more complicated for everybody. The new framework does include one
Speaker 1: important concession to modernity, fire protection. Fire resistant trusses of
Speaker 1: the crossing will isolate the spire and the two transept
Speaker 1: arms from the nave and the choir. A fire could
Speaker 1: never again race through the entire attic. Should flames break
Speaker 1: out in this space, misters distributed throughout the attic will
Speaker 1: help suppress them until firefighters can climb hundreds of stairs.
Speaker 1: Exiting the attic at the front of the church, we
Speaker 1: spiraled up the narrow stone stairs of the south tower,
Speaker 1: passing the balcony that Voile le Duc had populated with
Speaker 1: grotesque creatures. At the top of the tower, we circled
Speaker 1: around to the east. The sands swimmable again but still
Speaker 1: brown rolled and sparkled in the late morning sun. From
Speaker 1: the choir at the far end of the church, we
Speaker 1: could hear roofers hammering lead panels into place. The architect's
Speaker 1: decision to use lead, especially after the fire had spread
Speaker 1: that toxic material all over the cathedral and even outside
Speaker 1: it excited a public controversy, but the preservationists insisted it
Speaker 1: was more durable and impermeable than the alternatives, and that
Speaker 1: the elaborate ornamentation could be reproduced without it. We are
Speaker 1: eye leveled now with a new spire inside and out.
Speaker 1: It's a faithful copy of Whiles L. Duke's intricate creation
Speaker 1: made from his nineteenth century drawings, and one exception is
Speaker 1: the gilded brass rooster at the pinnacle, which we could
Speaker 1: see glinting in the sun. Its Villeneuve's own design. The
Speaker 1: replacement was hoisted into place in December twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: It carries inside it the relics of two Parisian saints
Speaker 1: and a scroll naming all two thousand restoration workers. It
Speaker 1: carries symbolic meaning too. The rooster is a symbol of
Speaker 1: French identity, of hope and resurrection, and in this case,
Speaker 1: since Veneneuve gave his burid flame winged the flame shaped
Speaker 1: wings of a cathedral rising from the ashes. The original
Speaker 1: was badly battered from its fall during the fire, but
Speaker 1: was salvaged and will be displayed as a memorial of
Speaker 1: that night. As we made our way back down from
Speaker 1: the tower, we crossed in front of the Great Organ
Speaker 1: on the balcony inside the front wall. It survived the fire,
Speaker 1: but had to be completely dismantled and cleaned, and for
Speaker 1: months tuners had been calibrating the eight thousand pipes one
Speaker 1: by one. With our backs to the towering pipes, we
Speaker 1: looked out at the walls and vaults of the nave.
Speaker 1: The stained glass glowed once again in the high windows.
Speaker 1: The soot from the fire, the lead, and the filth
Speaker 1: of the ages had been stripped from the stone walls,
Speaker 1: leaving them bright and creamy, with key stones in gold
Speaker 1: leaf and ribs delicately outlined in rich Burgundy. The vaults
Speaker 1: looked impeccable. My greatest satisfaction is that you can't tell
Speaker 1: the vaults that collapsed and were rebuilt, Villaineude told me later.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to like about the restoration, said Lenaud,
Speaker 1: the historian. With the brutal pealing of the walls, latex
Speaker 1: was sprayed on them and then peeled off in part
Speaker 1: to extract the lead, has left the stones so white
Speaker 1: that some will feel the cathedral has lost elements of
Speaker 1: its sacred character. It will take forty years of and
Speaker 1: condensation before we see the gray that the eyes appreciate.
Speaker 1: He now said to church officials, Notre Dame's sacredness drives
Speaker 1: not so much from the building itself as from what
Speaker 1: goes on inside it. The cathedral is, above all a
Speaker 1: place of worship, said Monseigneur Olivier Vadou duma that was
Speaker 1: built for the glory of God. Riveadou Dumas is the
Speaker 1: rector of Notre Dame, meaning he runs the place when
Speaker 1: it's open. He's expected a record fifty million to come
Speaker 1: to Notre Dame in twenty twenty five, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: like to call them to us. The word visitor is
Speaker 1: a better fit for what he anticipates they'll experience once inside.
Speaker 1: He hopes a visitor just might become a pilgrim. The
Speaker 1: redecoration is designed to facilitate that. In addition to sculptor
Speaker 1: Bardet's liturgical furnishings, there will be fifteen hundred new cheers
Speaker 1: of solid oak with low backs gently curved at the top.
Speaker 1: They'll be like a calm sea that acentuates the verticality
Speaker 1: of the vault. Designer Iona Valutrini told me. The new lighting,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, will do much more than illuminate
Speaker 1: the architecture, said Light sculptor Patrick Rimo is deploying a
Speaker 1: programmable array of one thousand, five hundred fifty l ed spotlights,
Speaker 1: each of which can vary in intensity and hue according
Speaker 1: to the season and what service is being held in
Speaker 1: the cathedral. The shadowy candlelight atmosphere on the verge of
Speaker 1: vigil of Easter, for example, could give way to a
Speaker 1: joyous illumination on Easter morning. What's important is to treat
Speaker 1: the cathedral as a living place, Remo said. After the
Speaker 1: fire of the clergy debated creating a little space in
Speaker 1: the choir where Catholics could attend Mass in peace among
Speaker 1: themselves and away from the visitors. In the end be
Speaker 1: decided to They decided the opposite. All masses will be
Speaker 1: celebrated of the main altar in the nave, with no
Speaker 1: barriers to keep tourists from wandering into the congregation. We
Speaker 1: have prietortis pritoritized, the demonstration of faith, of the tranquility
Speaker 1: of prayer. Ribadeau Dumas told me. The side chapels, which
Speaker 1: had been a hotchpodge, will become a pilgrim's way that
Speaker 1: gives a coherent account in paining the sculpture of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Faith. From the entrance in the center of the
Speaker 1: west facade, visitors will move along the north aisle, where
Speaker 1: each chapel will be devoted to an Old Testament prophet,
Speaker 1: then around the perimeter of the choir, which will recount
Speaker 1: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and finally along
Speaker 1: the south chapels of the nave, each of which will
Speaker 1: introduce a saint who embodies a particular value of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. A smartphone app will explain it all in
Speaker 1: multiple languages. In the apse, at the far east end
Speaker 1: of the church, visitors will pass one of the most
Speaker 1: treasured relics in Christendom, the crown of thorns, said to
Speaker 1: have been placed on Jesus's head before the crucifixion. Notre
Speaker 1: Dame never advertised its presence much. Architect Sylvain du Buisson
Speaker 1: was commissioned to design a new reliquary to display the
Speaker 1: crown more prominently, to magnify something that's of an incredible humility,
Speaker 1: he said. The artifact is a dried out woven wreath
Speaker 1: of rushes from which the thorns were long ago removed dubious.
Speaker 1: Whole solution is a twelve foot high, eight and a
Speaker 1: half foot wide altar piece of cedar. At the center
Speaker 1: is a glass hemisphere whose curved backed surface will be
Speaker 1: painted dark blue, but lit in such a way that
Speaker 1: the surface isn't apparent. Looking into it will be like
Speaker 1: looking into an infinite sky. The crown will hang within it.
Speaker 1: On the night of the fire, the crowds along the
Speaker 1: sun had no idea what was happening inside the cathedral.
Speaker 1: You couldn't see the fire fighters racing up into the
Speaker 1: north bell tower just in time to save it from
Speaker 1: a collapse that might have brought down the whole building.
Speaker 1: You couldn't see the fire fighters and church officials entering
Speaker 1: the burning structure to save the crowd of thorns and
Speaker 1: other priceless artifacts, which for the past few years have
Speaker 1: been kept safe in a vault at the move. By December,
Speaker 1: they will have been returned to their rightful home, as
Speaker 1: initially geographic. Much oppressed Paris officials had still not completed
Speaker 1: their investigation into what might have caused the fire. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it was some kind of electrical short circuit. On Saturday,
Speaker 1: December seventh, the French Estate will return the restored cathedral
Speaker 1: to the Archbishop of Paris. The Archbishop will bang on
Speaker 1: the doors with his large staff, and they will open
Speaker 1: once again to the world. The great Workan will wake
Speaker 1: up and plasp a hand of thanks. When you walk
Speaker 1: into Notre Dame, the first thing you'll see will be
Speaker 1: Bardet's bronze baptismal font, the portal to the Catholic faith.
Speaker 1: His new altar will be visible at the crossing under
Speaker 1: the new spire. In the society in which were often
Speaker 1: tempted by despair, reopening the cathedral as a sign of hope,
Speaker 1: Ribadeau Dumas said that moment should be as powerful and memorable.
Speaker 1: He said, as the sight of Notre Dame on fire
Speaker 1: was to the millions who sought in Paris and around
Speaker 1: the planet, it will be a kind of gust of
Speaker 1: joy that will I hope fill the world. Notre Dame's
Speaker 1: two bell towers featured ten bronze bells, the largest of
Speaker 1: which is called Immanuel, and hangs in the South tower,
Speaker 1: where it was undamaged by the fire cassed in sixteen
Speaker 1: eighty three under Louis fourteenth. The fourteen ton billamoth measures
Speaker 1: nearly nine people wide in its base and has traditionally
Speaker 1: been played at Christmas or on other special occasions, ringing
Speaker 1: out a low f sharp. Eight smaller bells in the
Speaker 1: North tower had to be removed and cleaned of lead dust.
Speaker 1: Two were damaged and needed to be restored at Corneille Havard,
Speaker 1: a foundry in Normandy. Next Why scientists are rethinking ancient
Speaker 1: gender rolls by Tom Netcalf. Archaeologists have found a new
Speaker 1: tool for studying human remains, and its up ending what
Speaker 1: we thought we knew about gender and past societies. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, archaeologists discovered a tomb at Valencina
Speaker 1: de la Concepcion, a town near Seville in southern Spain,
Speaker 1: or the ret just burial sites ever found in the region.
Speaker 1: It was filled with lavish goods, including entire elephant's tusk,
Speaker 1: a dagger with a crystal blade, and dozens of mother
Speaker 1: of Pearl beads. Scholars dated the tombs between forty two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two hundred years ago and suggested that,
Speaker 1: based on an assessment of the skeletal remains, the person
Speaker 1: buried there was between the ages of seventeen and twenty five.
Speaker 1: The remains in items in the grave convinced experts that
Speaker 1: this was a man who had held an elite position
Speaker 1: in society, but a recent study now suggests that this
Speaker 1: important man wasn't a man. After all. Their paper published
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, a team of researchers from the
Speaker 1: University of Seville and the University of Vienna concluded that
Speaker 1: the person in the burial chamber was a biological woman.
Speaker 1: Their claim up ended long standing assumptions about gender roles
Speaker 1: in ancient times, but what's notable is how they reached
Speaker 1: their conclusion. It represents a new way for archeologists to
Speaker 1: get the details of history right. The researchers didn't use
Speaker 1: any direct genetic evidence. They didn't study the corps of
Speaker 1: DNA to reveal a female's signature XX chromosomal pattern. Instead,
Speaker 1: they inferred the biological sex from a bit of protein
Speaker 1: in a tomb. In recent years, breakthroughs in the study
Speaker 1: of ancient DNA have enabled archaeologists to extract detailed information
Speaker 1: from remains, giving them insight into a range of physical
Speaker 1: characteristics such as sex and eye color. But the process
Speaker 1: involved can be expensive in time consuming. Samples are prone
Speaker 1: to contamination, and there is often not enough DNA to
Speaker 1: recover since molecules degrade over thousands of years. But now
Speaker 1: proteins are providing a way for scientists to create a
Speaker 1: partial genetic profile in the absence of DNA. These molecules,
Speaker 1: which give the body structure and execute its biochemical functions,
Speaker 1: are often more stable and better preserved in ancient bones
Speaker 1: and teeth than DNA is. By examining proteins, scientists can
Speaker 1: learn details of the DNA that created them. Of the
Speaker 1: tomb near Seviebe, the tooth enamel from the individual's remains
Speaker 1: showed the presence of proteins made by genes on an
Speaker 1: X chromosome, but no equivalent proteins made by genes on
Speaker 1: a Y chromosome, That suggests the person in the tomb
Speaker 1: was biologically female acsex and not male x Y. Such techniques,
Speaker 1: called proteomics, are often cheaper and faster than traditional DNA
Speaker 1: analysis and could transform archaeology. Although the method is only
Speaker 1: a few years old, it's already having a broad scientific impact.
Speaker 1: Like the researchers of the tomb in Spain, Peruvian archaeologist
Speaker 1: and National Geographic Explorer Gabriel Creato worked on a project
Speaker 1: that determined sex from proteins, which led to new insights
Speaker 1: into history. He sent teeth from the victims of a
Speaker 1: masked child sacrifice by the Chimu people of Peru to
Speaker 1: Glendon Parker at the University of California Davis, a pioneer
Speaker 1: in proto proteomics. The protein means inside revealed the key
Speaker 1: sacrifices were male children. It really helped us to understand that,
Speaker 1: at least for this event, boys were the most important
Speaker 1: sacrificial victims, Preeto says. Chimu sacrifices involved hundreds of victims.
Speaker 1: It would be prohibitively expensive to do DNA analysis on
Speaker 1: each of them. But that's not to say DNA analysis
Speaker 1: has no role to play. It's just used to answer
Speaker 1: more specific questions. Proteomics and an ancient DNA work together,
Speaker 1: Preeto says. In fact, some DNA analysis is going is
Speaker 1: ongoing for some of the sacrificial victims, for example, to
Speaker 1: show if any of them were related. Besides providing genetic
Speaker 1: information from animal and human remains, proteomics can be used
Speaker 1: to investigate microorganisms that caused historical diseases such as leprosy
Speaker 1: or plagues, to identify food residues on aged pottery, and
Speaker 1: to determine sources of fibers used in old textiles, which
Speaker 1: could lend insight into long lost trading networks. Biomolecular archaeologist
Speaker 1: Michael Buckley at the University of Manchester in the United
Speaker 1: Kingdom has developed a way to identify the species of
Speaker 1: an animal from an ancient bone by analyzing collagen, the
Speaker 1: main protein in bone. The technique was recently used to
Speaker 1: show that ivory found in a fifth, fifth or sixth
Speaker 1: century English grade came from an African elephant, which implies
Speaker 1: a previously unknown trade route across the ancient world. At
Speaker 1: that time, were starting to generate much larger amounts of
Speaker 1: data in getting much better information about human interactions with
Speaker 1: animals in the past. Baby says every year more ancient
Speaker 1: remains are uncovered. Proteomics means each discovery is more likely
Speaker 1: to fill in the missing chapters of our history books, or,
Speaker 1: as in the case of that extravagant burial site found
Speaker 1: in southern Spain, it could help rewrite existing chapters. For years,
Speaker 1: researchers assumed prehistoric societies in Iberia had been led by
Speaker 1: charismatic men. The discovery of the tomb near s View
Speaker 1: up ends that conventional thinking, suggesting that women could have
Speaker 1: been leaders too, and prompting a new way of understanding
Speaker 1: the society. Roles of women in Copper Age Iberia and
Speaker 1: elsewhere next Nisian flair. Herodotus recorded in his histories the
Speaker 1: pursion methods for assigning work. When building the canal between
Speaker 1: forty eighty three and four eighty y Z, groups of
Speaker 1: people drew lots for excavating sections. Often these teams were
Speaker 1: comprised of people who had been subsued into the Persian Empire.
Speaker 1: Laborers from Pholicia, of a skilled maritime culture, who what
Speaker 1: is now Lebanon, stood out for their engineering prowess. Workers
Speaker 1: and other groups attempted to dig straight down, causing, as
Speaker 1: Herodotus wrote, the steep size of the canale to pave
Speaker 1: in doubling their labor. Since they made this spa the
Speaker 1: same bread at its mouth and at the bottom, this
Speaker 1: was bound to happen. The Phoenicians, however, knew they had
Speaker 1: to dig the channel much wider than necessary at the top,
Speaker 1: and so showed the same skill in this as in
Speaker 1: all else they do. Taking in hand the portion that
Speaker 1: fell to them, they dug by making the topmost span
Speaker 1: of the canal as wide again as the canal was
Speaker 1: to be, and narrowed it as they worked lower, until
Speaker 1: at the bottom their work was of the same span
Speaker 1: as that of the others. The investigation carried out by
Speaker 1: archaeologists between nineteen ninety one and two thousand and one
Speaker 1: confirmed that some sections indeed had been dug on the slant,
Speaker 1: while others were vertically nature. Structural differences across sections of
Speaker 1: the channel corroborate herodotus description of various groups apparently following
Speaker 1: their own techniques, offering insight into the multicultural aspects of
Speaker 1: the construction work. Imperial motivations A man a plan of.
Speaker 2: Canale of Xerxes it stormed off Mount Athos peninsula that
Speaker 2: devastated the fleet of Xerzi's father, Darius the First in
Speaker 2: four nine two b c appear to influence Serxes's decision
Speaker 2: to create a canal. Nevertheless, the colossal financial and logistical
Speaker 2: burden of excavating a canale might not have been justified
Speaker 2: simply to avoid passing around the same case, the peninsula
Speaker 2: could be rounded by sea in only a few days,
Speaker 2: with the benefit of the experience and co operation of
Speaker 2: locals who knew how to read the weather, it would
Speaker 2: have been possible to avoid meeting another major storm so
Speaker 2: wide Exerxes opt to build the canal. A superstitious fear
Speaker 2: of the sea may have played a part. Then, of course,
Speaker 2: there was the element of propaganda. Such an audacious feat
Speaker 2: of engineering would surely have sent a powerful message to
Speaker 2: the Greeks. The pursion invasion, who was unstappable and sir
Speaker 2: reder was the only option. Heeraditus offers his own plausible
Speaker 2: theories as to the king's motivations. As far as I
Speaker 2: can judge by conjecture, Xerxes gave the command for this
Speaker 2: digging out of pride, wishing to display his power and
Speaker 2: leave a memorial. With no trouble, they could have drawn
Speaker 2: their ships across the peninsula, yet he ordered them to
Speaker 2: dig a canal from sea to sea. The canal therefore
Speaker 2: carried an element of grand standing. Xerxes, like other Persian sovereigns,
Speaker 2: wore the titled King of Cans. Like many who had
Speaker 2: come before him, he seems to have shared the compulsion
Speaker 2: to leave his mark on the world. In book six
Speaker 2: of his history as Herodotus recalls how Persian king Darius
Speaker 2: the First's fleet was wrecked in four ninety two b
Speaker 2: Z when it tried to round the Mount Athos peninsula.
Speaker 2: A storm destroyed hundreds of ships and more than twenty
Speaker 2: thousand men were killed. Since the coasts of Athos abound
Speaker 2: in wild beasts, some men were carried off by these
Speaker 2: and so perished. Others were dashed against the rocks. Those
Speaker 2: who did not swim perished because of that, and still
Speaker 2: others by the cold. The Scuclus readings from National Geographic
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