Episode 24

(Flu) Season's Greetings

Anna and Amber can’t help you with your real medical complaints, but they’re here with a whole batch of knowledge* about what people used to do for their sniffles (and worse). So grab your tea, lozenges, and a mouthful of miscellaneous herbs and shuffle along with us as we explore ways in which diseases have been diagnosed and treated over the millennia.

*Not medical knowledge! Go see a doctor!

To learn even more, check out:

Neanderthal healthcare practices crucial to survival (AAAS)

Prehistoric 'Aspirin' Found in Sick Neanderthal's Teeth (National Geographic)

Neandertal birth canal shape and the evolution of human childbirth (PNAS)

Watching Ancient Hominins Giving Birth (written by Anna for Sapiens)

Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus (Nature)

I am Ashurbanipal: king of the world, king of Assyria (British Museum)

Medicine and Doctoring in Ancient Mesopotamia (Grand Valley Journal of History)

Ugarit (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Clay Models Used to Analyze Entrails in the Ancient World (Atlas Obscura)

Origin and Development of Ayurveda (A Brief History) (Ancient Science of Life)

A glimpse of Ayurveda – The forgotten history and principles of Indian traditional medicine (Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine)

25 Ancient, Proven Home Remedies With Science Behind Them (Nursing Assistant Guides)

Weapon salve, tooth hangers and other ‘sympathetic’ cures (Marieke Hendriksen)

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The Dirt Podcast

Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.