How Archaeologists Try To Smell, Hear, And Taste The Past

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. Today on the show, to what length scientists will go to recreate what life was like long ago.

– It was hot out. It was frustrating. It was tedious work. There were flies biting me. I was elbow deep in this mix of brain and water.

IRA FLATOW: Archaeologists in movies have a reputation for being hands on. I’m thinking of Indiana Jones unearthing hidden treasure, or Lara Croft running through a temple. Archaeology in real life tends to be a bit more sedentary, but not always. There are Archaeologists committed to getting their hands dirty, like recreating the stinky, slimy, and sometimes tasty parts of ancient life.

My next guest enmeshed himself in the world of experimental Archaeology for his new book. Sam Kean, author of Dinner with King Tut, How Rogue Archaeologists are Recreating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations. Sam, welcome back to Science Friday.

SAM KEAN: Hi. Thanks for having me back.

IRA FLATOW: Nice to have you. What is experimental Archaeology? Give us a little thumbnail about that.

SAM KEAN: Yeah, experimental Archaeologists are trying to recreate things from the past, whether that is ancient tools, ancient foods, weapons, sometimes even ancient ships. And they’re sailing out on the ocean. What I really appreciate about the field is how sensory rich it is. You get to taste things. You get to smell things. You get to hear things. It’s just a lot more exciting, I think, than traditional dirt Archaeology.

And at different points in the book, I got to attend an authentic Roman banquet. There was a guy in Utah who built this giant catapult. We spent a day throwing these huge stones around at this wooden palisade that he’d built. I got to give someone a tattoo. I got to try ancient surgery, so just try all of these unusual things that really bring the past alive, really resurrects it, and makes it so sensory rich in a way that, again, traditional Archaeology is kind of lacking.

And some people call it not just experimental Archaeology, but experiential Archaeology, or even living Archaeology.

IRA FLATOW: And even rogue Archaeology.

SAM KEAN: Rogue, yeah. There’s a bit of rogue element to it.

IRA FLATOW: Because you made– I’m going to read from your book– I’ve made a do-it-yourself, mummy. You’ve been spattered with urine, blood, blubber, oil, and worse in countries all over the globe. You’ve really committed yourself to this.

SAM KEAN: Yeah I did. There were some times I was not having fun. Sometimes I really wanted to quit whatever I was doing. I made ancient leather, for instance, out of a deer hide. And I badly, badly wanted to quit that. It was hot out. It was frustrating. It was tedious work. There were flies biting me. I was elbow deep in– I was brain tanning, so I was elbow deep in this mix of brain and water, working it into this hide.

But it really– I think the emotions and the frustrations were an important part of the learning process because there was a lot of fun things that I did. But the tough parts were just as educational because it shows you just how difficult life was back then.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, you talked about tanning. You say that the most spectacular failure of the whole book is trying to tan a salmon. Tell us about that.

SAM KEAN: Yeah, trying to urine tan a salmon, actually, where it’s an ancient method they would use. They would take salmon skin. And they would soak it in urine, essentially. And that was how they would turn it from a skin that’s going to decompose into something that you could patch onto boots or make something else out of.

And I tried it. I maybe didn’t do it exactly properly. But it was an awful, foul smelling mess. It did not work at all. But I’m glad I gave it a shot at least. I’m not sure how my neighbors felt about it upstairs. But I thought it was interesting.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s talk about one example with minimal body fluids, where they get involved. You met a scientist recreating the beds our ancestors slept on 75,000 years ago. Now, tell us about that. Were they soft? Were they firm? Memory foam, maybe? I don’t know.

SAM KEAN: Maybe not quite memory foam. But they were found in a cave in Africa. And essentially, they discovered that there was a layer of ash and then a layer of bedding that they made out of different kinds of leaves. And by doing some experiments and thinking through what the purpose of that would have been, the ash was probably for comfort.

But they also did some experiments where they took ticks and they put them in rings of ash. And they watched what the ticks would do. And the ticks really struggled to get through the ash. And most of them died trying to get through this little ash trap they were in. And the ones who did make it through, their mouthparts were so gummed up they couldn’t bite anyone anymore. So the ash was for comfort, but also probably a way to keep ticks away from them.

And the top layer was made of aromatic leaves, probably to keep mosquitoes away. So there was a function to this, or a comfort function, but also trying to keep away parasites. So it was a very clever little system that they had.

And one thing I really appreciated about doing this was figuring out– we all probably the past was difficult. And they were doing things differently. But they had a lot of clever little practical chemistry and practical physics ideas like that. That really made me appreciate how clever people were.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, we don’t give them enough credit, do we?

SAM KEAN: No, I don’t think we do. We have our gadgets. And we just look back at all the bad things that were probably going on then. And there were definitely some bad things. But yeah, they had a lot of very sophisticated and advanced understanding of the ancient world, too.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, there’s a lot of tedium involved. We’re talking about ancient processes. And you explore that in the book, things like crafting tools, tanning hides, hunting. They all took a long time and a lot of patience. Did that give you a different appreciation for ancient people?

SAM KEAN: Yeah, again, that frustration of just going through this process. The tanning took three or four days, if you want to do it properly. I was there for one and a half days or so doing this. But just the amount of work that goes into making something simple, like a cloak or part of a tent or something like that.

But I do think it helped me appreciate the thing that I made because it wasn’t disposable. If I had made something spent a couple of days making it, I’m going to take very good care of that thing. And it’s going to mean more to me because part of me is inside that thing. So I think that was something that it helped me appreciate was that we can understand more about the material world as well.

But you can understand– by doing experimental Archaeology– but you can also understand more about people’s mindsets and maybe even a little bit of the spiritual or the emotional aspect that they would have brought to making things and why it was important to them.

IRA FLATOW: Do you think these people had to experiment with this stuff first? Or was it sort of passed-down knowledge?

SAM KEAN: I think there was some of both. I mean, obviously to do the thing the first time, or to get it right the first time, there would have been some experimentation there, maybe under duress sometimes, where you run out of something or you’re in a crisis, you have to figure something out.

I talk a little bit in the book about hunting tools in the Arctic. And the people there, the native people there had the most advanced hunting technology of any pre-industrial society. They had such sophisticated tools because they couldn’t fail in their hunts. If they didn’t bring home food that day from a hunt, there was no backup option. So they really had to be clever about experimenting, about coming up with new tools and things like that.

IRA FLATOW: You describe how you tried to recreate how they made spearheads and things like that, tools. How easy was it to do that?

SAM KEAN: It was not easy. I was very humbled doing that process. I had a notion that it was sort of like at the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssey, there’s just monkeys kind of crashing rocks together. And tools fall off. And you just grab whatever’s there. I didn’t appreciate how precise they could be.

I remember, it was an archaeologist at Kent State University, he took a stone and he took a little Sharpie. And he drew this dotted line on one side of it. And then he turned it over, and he drew a little circle on the other side. And he said, I’m going to take this cobble, this hammer stone. I’m going to hit it on this dot. And then it’s going to fracture where this dotted line is on the other side.

In my head, I’m like, OK, I’m sure it’ll be close to that. But he went and he hit it. And it fractured exactly– he essentially bisected that Sharpie line on the back. And I was stunned at how good he was, as opposed to me. Half the time it didn’t break. Half the time I hit it too hard. It would shatter into a bunch of pieces. So it was humbling, but quite interesting to see how good they could be making, even something like a stone tool that we think of as a very primitive thing.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, they had practice. They learned the technique.

SAM KEAN: Yeah, and that was something that probably would have been passed down, teaching people, younger people, how to do it, to make sure you’re doing it properly.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s talk about mummies, I mean, because obviously these were a large part of burial routines in ancient Egypt. How do you recreate these methods in modern times?

SAM KEAN: There are a couple of ways. One thing I didn’t really appreciate before the book got started is that the Egyptians made a lot of animal mummies on a huge, huge scale. They have found graveyards there where there was something like four million bird mummies or seven million dog mummies. So they did a lot of mummification. And not just on human beings.

So there are Archaeologists out there who are making animal mummies to try to understand some of the processes from ancient times. And I actually made a fish mummy in my apartment in Washington, DC. And I was surprised at how simple the process was and how good it was at preserving the fish because I made this during a summer in Washington, DC, so pretty hot, pretty nasty, pretty humid. And fish are not known for lasting very long outside of refrigeration, in fact, the opposite.

Yeah, but this fish never saw the inside of a refrigerator. And it is still on my shelf to this day, perfectly preserved.

IRA FLATOW: What were the ingredients? How did you do that?

SAM KEAN: Yeah, so I did it the way the Egyptians did it. There was a mineral called natron which forms naturally in wadis, dry creek beds and things there. And it’s just a mixture of baking soda, and salt. So a lot of people could go home and just pour them together, equal parts baking soda and salt, and you could mummify something. It’s really very, very easy.

And of course, the Egyptians had all this stuff, wrapping it in bandages and rubbing oil in, all those other things to go with the ritual. But the dehydration process to preserve the flesh was just baking soda, and salt mixed together. It’s a natural mineral.

IRA FLATOW: Now, not everything that you explore in this book is long gone knowledge. Some of the ancient methods are still used today like my favorite topic, concrete. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

SAM KEAN: Yeah. So yeah, I did talk about Roman concrete in particular. And the Romans actually had a clever little system where they would leave chunks of undigested lime in the concrete. And a lot of Archaeologists and people looking back at it thought, well, they just didn’t mix it properly. It was sort of like little hunks of flour in dough. They just thought they weren’t mixing it properly.

But some scientists at MIT actually recreated some Roman concrete and realized that by leaving those chunks in there, they were essentially making self-healing concrete because eventually water is going to get in there. It’s going to be a crack. Normal modern concrete, the water gets in there, it freezes, it expands. It’s going to break. When there were these undigested hunks in there, it would actually react with the water and more concrete would form and stick it together. So it was a very clever system that we thought was a mistake until we actually went into the lab and tried things out.

IRA FLATOW: No wonder it’s lasted so long.

SAM KEAN: Yeah, that’s why the Roman bridges and the Pantheon and all these things are still standing today.

IRA FLATOW: We have to take a break. But when we come back, the best thing on the ancient menu that Sam got to try.

SAM KEAN: I am convinced, fresh out of the oven, this would have drawn raves in any bistro in Paris or New York, or anywhere. It was an amazing, amazing bread.

IRA FLATOW: One of the things that strikes me about your book is that scientists, the Indiana Jones part, where scientists are often putting themselves on the line. They risk bug bites, injuries, food poisoning. But they still stay as committed as ever.

SAM KEAN: Yeah, I mean, they are just so obsessed with some topic that they’re just going to follow through no matter the pains, no matter the heartache or the injuries they’re going to suffer. There was a lot of commitment in a lot of these cases.

IRA FLATOW: Did you find that the experimental Archaeologists you met, did they align with your previous views, or did they challenge your views about what Archaeologists do, I guess, in their normal life?

SAM KEAN: Yeah, they definitely challenged my view of what Archaeology is and could be because I love Archaeology. I love all it can reveal about the past, these big meaty questions about human history. But I would go to Archaeology sites and it just seems so tedious, people sitting there in the dirt with toothbrushes, digging out pot shards.

And experimental Archaeology was really exciting to me because you’re gaining knowledge in new ways. It’s bringing up new questions. So it did excite me that there was a new way to approach the field. And you could get insights from something that was more active and a lot more interesting, I thought.

IRA FLATOW: Did you think that these standard, I’ll call them Archaeologists, with their toothbrushes and lying in the dirt, are looking down their noses, possibly, at the experimental Archaeologists?

SAM KEAN: I think there is a bit of skepticism among traditional Archaeologists, in part because traditional Archaeology has been so good. And we’ve learned so much from it. It’s the idea, why would we change what’s working so well?

I do think with the younger generation coming up, there’s a bit more acceptance of the idea that, yeah, can run some experiments sometimes. You can try things out, try to make things. So I think it’s starting to become more of a tool that other Archaeologists are realizing, oh, we can get some insight into this if we actually try to make an ancient hut or an ancient tool or something like that.

IRA FLATOW: OK, now my most important question of our interview. What did you have the most fun doing while researching this book?

SAM KEAN: A few things. That day throwing the catapult balls around, those big stones, that was a lot of fun. I mean, that was just magical experience. It was a beautiful day in the mountains in Utah. So that was great. Getting to tattoo someone, I had never imagined I would be doing that. So that was interesting.

But probably be the food, I think is what really stands out, getting to try all of these ancient recipes and ancient foods, and just trying things I never thought I would eat before. I think the most fun example of that was the Egyptian bread I got to try. It was made by a guy, Seamus Blackley, who in his previous life actually invented the Xbox gaming system. So that’s kind of his call to fame.

And he decided he wanted to try to make bread, eat ancient Egyptian bread. And he made some, posted something on Twitter. And he got absolutely hammered for that. And people said, this is terrible. You didn’t do this authentically at all. What are you doing?

And instead of throwing a tantrum or getting angry, he said, you know what? They’re right. They have a point. And he kind of enlisted his critics to help him out. And he decided he was going to fly over to Egypt. He was going to find some ancient bread molds there with dormant yeast on them. He was going to reconstitute them. He sourced some ancient heirloom grains. He sourced ancient wood that they would have used, the style of wood they would have used. He built a fire pit in his backyard. And he sat and practiced until he could make some Egyptian bread.

And he let me try some. And it was probably the best bread I’ve ever had in my life. It was a sourdough with coriander in it, with emmer grains, so a little different flavor to it. And he gave me a loaf that he’d cooked two days before. And we warmed it up in the company microwave. And it was absolutely delicious, even then. I am convinced, like fresh out of the oven, this would have drawn raves in any bistro in Paris or New York, or anywhere. It an amazing, amazing bread.

IRA FLATOW: Well, as a sourdough bread baker myself, I’m eager to get a bit of his starter. Great book, Sam. Thanks for taking time to be with us today.

SAM KEAN: Well, thanks for having me.

IRA FLATOW: Sam Kean, author of Dinner with King Tut, how Rogue Archaeologists are Recreating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations. And if we’ve piqued your interest and you want more, you’re in luck because this book is our SciFri Book Club pick this month. So join the community to continue the conversation in our online discussion group.

Plus, we’re hosting a livestream Q&A with author Sam Kean and a community meeting with other science book lovers. You can learn more at sciencefriday.com/bookclub, sciencefriday.com/bookclub.

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Hey, thanks for listening. This episode was produced by Kathleen Davis. See you next time. I’m Ira Flatow.

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