Every year, the American football season ends with the Big Game, but this week, Anna and Amber are superfans of a much bigger game: the 3500-year-old Mesoamerican ballgame. From its Olmec origins to the athletes keeping it alive today, learn all about how to play, why you might not want to (ouch), and what makes it so significant to past and present communities.
We all do it. We've done it for millions of years. It's the Poopisode, a Very Special Sponsor pick! Anna and Amber discuss coprolites (archaeological poo), and some of the surprising things we've learned from it. Anna's pun game has rarely been stronger, and Amber...well, Amber survived this episode.
At the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Anna and Amber sat down with six anthropologists and learned about the history of anthropology, the future of anthropology, and what the discipline looks like both in the classroom and out in the world.
Part 3 of 3. In this episode, we conclude our journey along the human timeline with a look at the genus Homo, of which we are all card-carrying members. Amber also contributes a brief study of human butts-- what's up with them?
Were the pyramids the work of extraterrestrials? No, of course they weren't, but why do some people and internet memes seem to think otherwise? Turns out there's a simple answer and a more complex answer, and Anna and Amber get into all of it in this special bonus excerpt from Dirt After Dark.
Part 2 of 3. Anna heads further up the family tree (as Amber lags behind, gasping), and introduces us to our Australopith and Paranthropus relatives. You can always rely on us for our australo-pithiness: Anna gives us the scoop on Lucy's new neighbor Selam and tells us about why babies have such grabby little hands, while Amber grapples with the prospect of a world before people and realizes she might have met an extinct hominin at a party once.
Part 1 of 3. Anna and Amber work their way up the trunk of our shared evolutionary tree, tackling the thorny issues of identifying our earliest mammal, primate, and hominin ancestors. We learn about the early development of bipedal walking, and really struggle (as usual) with the question of deep time, but this week it escalates to wondering how anybody knows anything. All we know is, we didn’t come from no monkey.
From that juicy sarcophagus in Alexandria, to the bajillion newly detected Maya structures in Guatemala, to the itty bitty bones of the newest addition to our hominin family tree, there's so much research coming our way!
Anna and Amber have prepared a decadent a wine and cheese platter for your ears. Learn about the world's oldest wine gunk and the many (many!) sizes of wine bottles, and then we'll discuss the difference between wine and "wine," and nibble on some stories about very, very aged cheese.
Available on Patreon: Aleister Crowley is known for his work as an occultist, magician, writer, painter, mountain climber, and top-notch weirdo. But did you know that much of his inspiration came from the world of archaeology and ancient history? Did you know that he got it all wrong? Come along!
Available on Patreon: Our roundup of the newest oldest stuff this month includes an exhibition full of clothing items that exemplify contemporary women trailblazers’ work, the scale of cultural heritage destruction in Yemen, how humans will be remembered by the chicken bones we leave behind, and a note found in the butt of a Jesus statue… and other stuff, but get a load of that last one.
Brand new from The Dirt: For a $25 donation, YOU can choose an episode topic for Anna and Amber to cover! (Terms and conditions apply: we won’t do it if it’s fake or terrible, but we’ll work with you to come up with something you’ll enjoy!) You can dedicate the episode to your favorite nerd, special someone, or hey—to yourself! Give a completely unique gift, and support The Dirt at the same time!
Available on Patreon: This month, we do a bit of bopping around the Red Sea, as we talk about the Arabian Peninsula before Islam (and today!), specifically Mada'in Saleh, and what the medieval world's most famous tourist thought of Kilwa Kisiwani.
Available on Patreon: Our roundup of the newest oldest stuff this month includes an encyclopedia of traditional medicine in the Amazon, conversations around repatriation of art and antiquities, itty bitty terracotta warriors, and so much more.
Available on Patreon: Anna and Amber discuss culture-bound syndromes, mass hysteria, and the very real symptoms and consequences they yield. What makes an illness culture-bound, whose cultures are exempt, and what can we learn from it all?
Available on Patreon: We talked about boogeypeople, now let's talk about boggypeople. What exactly happens when someone is buried in a bog? We explain how bogs work, speculate at the lives that preceded some bog mummies, and learn that bog burials aren't limited to northern Europe!
Available on Patreon: Our roundup of the newest oldest stuff this month includes visualizing colonization around the world, some current PR challenges at the British Museum, the anthropology of heavy metal, and the discovery of a mummified body FULL OF BEES.
Available on Patreon: Turn down the lights, pour a glass of wine, put on some music, and join Anna and Amber as we... discuss the diagnosis and treatment of STIs throughout history.
![Episode 32 - [Poop Joke Here]: Coprolites and the Value of Fossilized Feces](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b63c66875f9eed6d86405f6/5b63ca3103ce641d3e9aca3a/5c4d0fbb8a922d08810114f3/1548565215001/800px-Human_coprolite_found_in_burial_from_archaeological_site_of_Furna_do_Estrago_-_1756-0500-5-586-1.png)
Valentine's Day is upon us, and love is in the air-- love for relative and absolute dating methods, that is! Anna brings the science with C14 dating and its gang of radiometric friends, boggles minds with flipped magnetic poles and the last time archaeological material saw the sun, while, Amber makes a lot of jokes that even she hates, embraces the nihilism of climate change, and attempts to explain the law of superposition via cake. So, the usual— but that’s why you love us!