Cemetery Series: Cemetery Geology

Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

Cemeteries serve as memorials to our loved one’s lives and stories, but the stories of those who have passed on aren’t the only ones that can be found in a graveyard. Tales of geology, environmental health, and wildlife are also hidden there. Today I’m going to share some of the geological stories of headstones.

Kings Chapel Burying Ground. Photo by author.

Author's image.

Here are a few popular stones used in cemeteries over the centuries.

Granite

Granite. A creative commons image.

Granite is a durable igneous rock that makes for a long lasting tombstone. People began to use granite for cemetery monuments in the 1860s and it remains a popular stone for memorials to this day. Granite is formed from magma which cooled about ten miles below the earth’s surface. Whenever granite shows up at the surface of the earth that means the ten miles of earth covering it have eroded away over time leaving the granite visible. North Carolina is home to the world’s largest open-faced granite quarry. All stone there is mined directly from the surface. Granite comes in a variety of consistencies and colors determined by the composition of the minerals in the rock. Quartz, mica, and various feldspars make up most of granite and give it a characteristic speckled look. Sometimes granite contains xenoliths, sections of foreign rocks which did not melt and integrate into granite smoothly, but remained their own species of rock.

Granite holds up well under weathering, though the mica in it may degrade leaving it pitted. Stains from soot can darken granite, and lichens, moss, and ivy growing on the stone can change its appearance as well.

Quincy Granite Scandal

In the 19th century a dark variety of granite found near Boston known as Quincy granite was all the rage. Quincy granite got its dark color from some of its feldspars which were degrading into clay in a process called kaolinization. Quincy granite was used in many buildings and monuments until people found out that much of the stone being sold wasn’t actually Quincy granite at all, but a lighter granite rubbed with carbon and oil to make it darker. This dye eventually faded, leaving the stones splotchy and the customers disgruntled. After this scam no one wanted anything to do with Quincy granite.

Sandstone

Prepared sandstone sample. A public domain image.

While granite (non-dyed) holds up well under weathering, sandstone is probably the least durable rock used in cemeteries. Whole layers easily flake off as wind and rain wear down the stone. Monuments and headstones made from sandstone were popular from 1650-1890.

Monument at Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock formed from sandy broken up pieces of other rocks deposited at the bottom of a river or sea. When these deposits were subjected to intense pressure, they condensed into a new rock, sandstone. The color of sandstone differs widely across sandstone species depending on where they formed and how they weathered. Sandstone is often striped with different colored sediment. In addition to miscellaneous rock pieces, sandstone often contains quartz and feldspar, and is held together by silica, calcite, or iron oxides.

Limestone

Limestone quarry. A creative commons image.

Limestone is similar to sandstone, but it holds up to weathering better and it is formed from calcite and silicate sediment, not sand. Impurities in the sediment will create darker limestone, but lighter varieties with fewer impurities are the most prized. The calcite and silicate either directly precipitate from the seawater or are obtained from the abandoned shells of sea creatures lying on the ocean floor. Some limestone contains fossils of these organisms. Limestone commonly forms in tropical or subtropical seas where calcite and silicate are abundant.

Monument at Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

Most calcite and silicate sediments are compressed into limestone in the same way sand is compressed into sandstone. Some limestones even contain visible sedimentary layers like sandstone does. However, oolitic limestone, also used for headstones, forms in a different way and doesn’t contain these layers. Small grains of sand roll about the sea floor collecting calcite, which acts as a matrix to bind these grains together, and voilà, oolitic limestone is formed.

Ooids in a thin-section. A public domain image. 

Headstones made of limestone were most popular from 1780-1930, but limestone was used much earlier to make the first sarcophagi. Sarcophagus literally means “flesh eat,” a rather disturbing name which stems from the unusual limestone used to make sarcophagi which ate away at human flesh.

Sarcophagus of Pharaoh Merenptah. A creative commons image.

Marble

 Marble. A creative commons image.

After limestone is metamorphosized at high temperatures and pressures it becomes marble. The purest marble is perfectly white and has a sugary texture. Marble is highly sought after for its elegant beauty. Marble may be beautiful, but over time its glory fades as carbonization brought on by rainfall causes its surface to recede, rendering headstone inscriptions illegible. In an effort to combat the lost lettering, lead letters were attached with pins to marble monuments, but eventually surface recession caused these letters to fall out. Marble is also easily stained with lichens or soot.

Author's own image.

Marble was in vogue from 1780-1930. The world’s most prized marble has no impurities and comes from Carrara, Italy. Michelangelo used Carrara marble to carve his famous statue of David, and Leonardo Da Vinci helped a quarrying machine for this site. Today, the supply of Carrara marble is running low. Oddly enough, the world’s cheapest marble, Italian grey marble, also hails from Carrara.

Monument from Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

The United States contains several marble sources on the east coast, the most popular sites are Barre, Vermont and Knoxville, Tennessee. The land which now forms Vermont and Tennessee was once the bottom of a tropical sea, which provided the right conditions for limestone formation. This limestone then metamorphosized into marble. 

Monument from Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

Slate

Slate. A public domain image.

Slate, like marble, is sedimentary rock that was metamorphosized to become a new variety of stone. Unlike marble, slate is formed from sedimentary rock made of mud and possibly volcanic ash, not limestone. Slate tends to be dark grey or tinted deep purple or green from the volcanic ash. It is layered in thin sheets that peel apart easily. Gravestones made of slate are often coated with a protective material to prevent water from getting between the layers and pushing them apart. Once the coating is on, slate weathers well given its hard nature. Being hard isn’t always good for a gravestone, however, as it is highly difficult to carve inscriptions into slate. Still, professional gravestone carvers in the later 1600s and early 1700s made impressive carvings on slate of death imagery such as skulls, hourglasses and cherubs. Carved slate gravestones in New England are a crucial relics of Puritan art.

Carved slate gravestone from King's Chapel Burying Ground. Photo by author.

Carved slate gravestone from King's Chapel Burying Ground. Photo by author.

Judge Hathorne's grave. Salem, MA. Photo by author.

Modern Additions

Larvikite and Gabbro are the most common stones used to make grave markers.

Larvikite. A public domain image.

Larvikite is a coarse grained igneous rock with an abundance of feldspars, which give it an iridescent shine. Most larvikite is mined in Scandinavia. It is still unclear how larvikite will weather since most gravestones made of it haven’t been up very long.

Gabbro. A public domain image.

Gabbro is also an igneous rock that appears dark grey, but turns black with polish. Molten black and white feldspars form this rock, which weathers easily when exposed to water. Gabbro is often mistaken for, and even sold as, black granite. One beautiful variety of Gabbro, black galaxy, is flecked with bronzite which gives the stone the aura of a starry sky at night.

Gravestones and monuments help us to honor our loved ones and give cemeteries their characteristic beauty. But how do these stones and what’s underneath them impact the world around them? Stay tuned for the next installment of the Cemetery Series: Death and the Environment.

Monument at Cortland Rural Cemetery. Photo credit to PBM.

Note:
In this post I used the terms gravestone, headstone, grave marker and tombstone interchangeably. By common usage, all refer to some type of burial marker. However, gravestones, headstones, grave markers, and tombstones actually are specific terms which refer to different styles of burial markers. Here is a link to a page which explains the exact definition of these terms for those who are interested. 

Sources.

Cobalt: The Most Deadly Element?

Cobalt may seem innocent, peacefully hidden near the center of the periodic table, but in reality this element, commonly known for the beautiful blue pigment it produces, is deadly.

The name cobalt is sinister in itself. It comes from the German word for the element, Kobold, which means “goblin” or “evil spirit.” German miners gave cobalt this name since mining cobalt was very dangerous. Mining any element is hazardous to some degree but cobalt is particularly nasty since a toxic gas (arsenic trioxide) often occurs with cobalt in nature

.

Cobalt is still mined today, mainly for use in smartphones. No doubt modern miners there would agree that Kobold is a suitable name. Cobalt miners, often children, work in perilous conditions, risking permanent lung damage earning about a dollar a day. Cobalt is in high demand due to its value as a component of super alloys, metal alloys that resist rusting and retain their properties at high temperatures. Super alloys have a variety of uses including forming parts of electronics and jet engines.

Cobalt isn’t only dangerous to miners. Cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope of cobalt, could potentially wipe out the entire human race. Leo Szilard, a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project, figured out that an explosion of a cobalt-60 dirty bomb would kill all life in the vicinity of the explosion once it exploded, and would continue killing all life that ventured in the area for about 90 years. A cobalt-60 dirty bomb kills with heat like a normal nuclear bomb, but it has a hidden weapon that keeps it deadly for decades: gamma radiation.

A plastic isotope container containing cobalt-60
image used under creative commons

Most radioactive elements emit gamma rays for a few days, but cobalt is special. It keeps emitting deadly gamma rays for decades. These gamma rays mix up the chromosomes in our white blood cells either killing them or giving them cancer, making us vulnerable to disease. Szilard estimated that if one tenth of an ounce of cobalt-60 was sprinkled over every square mile of earth, all of humankind would perish. Thankfully no one has attempted to make cobalt-60 nuclear weapons yet, as far as we know.

Cobalt-60, despite its dangers, can also be used to help humans. Its radioactive properties are used to treat cancer, preserve food through food irradiation, and produce powerful X-rays to see through metals.

These are modern uses of cobalt, but humans have been using non-radioactive isotopes of cobalt since ancient times. Back then, cobalt was mainly used for dye. The ancient Chinese used cobalt blue in their pottery glazes. The ancient Egyptians probably used cobalt too since a small glass object colored with cobalt was found in Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb. In addition to producing pretty blue dye, cobalt is one of the three naturally occurring magnetic elements

.

The alchemists used cobalt in their experiments, but they attributed its properties and beautiful blue color to copper or bismuth. It wasn’t until 1730 that Georg Brandt discovered cobalt to be a unique element making cobalt the first element discovered that the alchemists hadn’t already isolated and named.

Cobalt Blue
a public domain image

The earliest use of cobalt, long before Georg Brandt or even the ancient Chinese, is the element’s use in the human body. Cobalt is vital to human health as a trace metal. We need it to form enzymes and produce vitamin B-12. It’s kind of crazy that one isotope of cobalt could kill us all, but we need another to survive.

Sources.

An Ether Monument?

While wandering the Boston Common last month, I saw a picturesque monument dedicated to ether. I was surprised to see a monument for ether, a colorless liquid that causes unconsciousness and has hypnotic effects. I thought of ether as a popular recreational drug from the 19^th century, hardly something worth a memorializing with a statue.

The momument

It ends up that ether has been around for a while, it was discovered in 1275, and has been used for a few different purposes. The monument also has quite a history.

In the 1840s, a practicing dentist from Boston who never managed to finish medical school experimented with different drugs to use as anesthetics. This man was William Morton and he tried everything - from alcohol to opium- to lessen his patients’ pain. Alcohol was largely ineffective and opium had too many side effects. After seeing his former business partner Horace Wells’ limited success with nitrous oxide as a staple anesthetic, Morton decided to experiment with ether.

First Morton tried topical application of ether, which reduced the pain but didn’t end it completely. Next he experimented with inhalation of a mixture of ether and opium, which also wasn’t ideal. Last of all he tried inhalation of pure ether, and this was the winner. After inhaling ether, the patient went unconscious and felt no pain whatsoever during the operation. Ether is transmitted to the blood stream through the lungs so the effect is almost instantaneous. Ether’s influence tends to only last about half an hour, unlike opium. (One patient of Morton’s didn’t recover from the opium used during her operation for a week!)

Boston Common

After his success with ether, Morton developed a special device for ether inhalation he called a “letheon inhaler.” In 1846 Morton removed Gilbert Abbott’s vascular tumor in his jaw at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s operating theatre. Morton administered ether, and Abbott felt no pain throughout the operation.

People were impressed with the remarkable success of ether and in 1866, Thomas Lee, a retired merchant, suggested that the city of Boston build a monument on the Boston Common dedicated to the first use of ether as an anesthetic in 1846. The city agreed and the monument still stands there to this day.

Me in front of the ether monument

While Morton was adamant that he was the first person to use ether as an anesthetic, this may have not actually been the case. Ether began being used in medical treatment in 1794, and was widely used for recreational purposes in the 1800s. Morton spent most of his life in disputes with medical men about ether use. I would guess that Morton probably wasn’t the first one to use ether as an anesthetic, though he did popularize its use. Thankfully he did! Imagine surgery without anesthesia – it would be extremely painful. While ether isn’t used as an anesthetic anymore, Morton’s work no doubt helped anesthetics become a staple during medical operations, and that is well worth a memorial.

Mining Part One

Just by driving around the Iron Range, it was easy to tell that the earth was rich with iron.

The view from Soudan

The view from Soudan

Old Railroad for transporting ore

The ground was red, the rocks were red, even that lake water was red. My white shoes got partially dyed a rust color. The funny thing is that iron ore is actually a metallic blue, but its dust is red.

The water is red!

The  Soudan Iron Mine was the best source of iron in Minnesota from the time it opened in the late 1800s until it went out of operation in 1962. The ore mined there was hard and had a 62% iron percentage. That’s high enough that two rocks from the mine could be welded together. The hardness of the iron in Soudan also made the mine safer and less likely to cave in than the nearby soft iron mines. Soudan Mine is half a mile deep with 27 levels of mining shafts.

More red water

This does not mean the conditions at Soudan were all that great. When it first opened, there was no electricity, mules pulled the carts for transporting iron ore, and miners had to work in the pitch darkness by candlelight. Their bosses did not provide the candles. The miners had to pay for the candles out of their own pockets.

Lake Vermilion

There is still a lot of good quality iron left in Soudan, but it’s so deep in the earth that it’s too expensive to mine. While the mine was still in production, Soudan’s iron ore was shipped across Lake Superior to factories where it was used to produce a variety of products including weapons for both World Wars.

One of the people on our tour was a metallurgist who travels around teaching and inspecting mines for the company he works for. He told us that the iron used to make steel today is of a much poorer quality than the Soudan iron, but it’s cheaper.

Soudan hasn’t gone completely out of use. There are now tours for the public, and there is currently a physics laboratory deep in the mine that is working on subatomic research.

The ore. The blue is the iron

Bats and some mysterious microorganisms inhabit the mines. Once, some scientists spotted some bubbly and flammable water coming out of a drill hole at Soudan half a mile underground. There wasn’t supposed to be any methane at Soudan, so it was puzzling why the water was flammable. They took samples of the water, and when it was tested, they found living organisms in it that were feeding off the iron and producing methane. I find it amazing that organic life is living off iron that far underground.

The view from Soudan is also beautiful. If you happen to be up in the Iron Range I suggest you visit!

Elsewhere in the Iron Range we saw a fawn!

Crimes for Science Part 2

Here's the second part of the post I put up last week, hope you enjoy some more juicy information on crimes done for science.

Desperate anatomists in need of bodies sometimes stole the bodies themselves, while others hired resurrectionists - or body snatchers -  to do the work for them. Being a ressurectionist wasn't a bad job for an unskilled laborer. It paid $1,000 a year, about twice as much as other jobs of the same skill set. And, they had the summers off.

One of the large, detailed illustrations 

in Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica,

 1543,marking the rebirth of anatomy

Resurrectionists often shipped the bodies to their employers in the mail, and mishaps occurred. One anatomist received a pack of food and a large ball of yarn in the mail instead of the cadaver he was expecting. Imagine the horror of the person who expected to receive the food and yarn, but got a corpse instead.

Sometimes anatomists even turned a blind eye to fairly obvious murder if it meant they could get more bodies.

In 1828 anatomist Richard Knox opened his door to two strangers, William Burke and William Hare, with a dead body at their feet. He assumed they were resurrectionists, and without asking questions, paid the two men for the corpse and sent them on their way.

It ends up that Burke and Hare ran a boardinghouse called Tanner's Close. The previous night one of their lodgers died in his sleep. That lodger owed Burke and Hare some money, so instead of giving his body a proper burial, they sold him for dissection, which gave them plenty of money to cover the debt.

When Burke and Hare realized how much money they could make by selling corpses to anatomy they started killing off their customers. Their method of murder was smothering, and soon after "to burke"  meant to smother someone.

Knox never asked where all these nice, fresh bodies came from, even when some were still oozing with blood. Knox preserved one of Burke and Hare's victims, the young Mary Paterson, in a tank of alcohol in his lab.

Hare was let off for his crimes, but Burke was caught, hanged and then dissected. His skeleton is preserved at the Royal Collage of Surgeons in Edinburgh, and some wallets made of his skin exist to this day.

The creepy history of anatomy both disturbs me and fascinates me. It makes me wonder what secrets the history of other science disciplines hold. When I find out I'll be sure to write about it on here, so stay tuned!

Crimes for Science Part 1

Anatomy is a science with a gruesome and disturbing past. Think about it, the best way to learn about the inner structure of the human body is to cut open dead human bodies and have a look, which is a little creepy.

It is illegal for scientists to just start chopping up any dead person they want to. Today only people who have donated their bodies to science can be dissected. In the past only criminals or murderers could be cut up and examined. During some time periods human dissection was completely illegal. When anatomy schools started, the demand for fresh cadavers to dissect was greater than the supply. Zealous anatomy professors and students procured bodies in their own, often illegal ways. These early pioneers of anatomy were dedicated enough to risk jail time for science. That's commitment.

Today, anatomy is a much more respectful science than it was in the past, explains Mary Roach in her book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Labs will even hold memorial services for the bodies they dissect. The past, however, was a different story.

Even the very first roots of anatomy are disturbing. In the year 300 B. C. E. Egyptian King Ptolemy was the first ruler to allow dissection of dead criminals. Unfortunately, one of the most prominent scientists of the era, Herophilus (the Father of Anatomy), got a bit over-excited about his work. He dissected criminals while they were alive! No anesthesia, nothing.

In 18th and 19th century England, the same trend of dissecting criminals (deceased) prevailed, only the pool of corpses anatomists could use had been reduced to only executed murderers. Live dissections were also prohibited.

However, their weren't enough executed murderers needed to fill the body quota needed for anatomy classes. Professors took to buying amputated limbs on the black market and stealing bodies from graves. It actually wasn't illegal to steal the dead from their graves because dead bodies were generally thought to be undesirable, and no one thought to make laws against stealing them.

The history of anatomy is so fascinating and gory I had to split up my original super long post into two parts. Next week I'll post part two, stay tuned for more horrific history!

Cures That Didn't Work: The Black Death

Why not live life to it's fullest when it could be over any minute? This was the sentiment of many people living in 14th century Europe during the outbreak of the Black Death. Two million people died from the Black Death, and people who weren't dead knew that they could die any day. In their remaining time on earth they decided to abandon the system and just do whatever they wanted. This wasn't a difficult thing to do because the system had basically fallen apart. During the worst outbreaks of the plague regular society stopped as people became too sick or too dead to do their jobs. Those who were still alive and well suffered from fear of the plague, famine (due to lack of food production), and unsanitary conditions (due to lack of garbage disposal). Anarchy took over the land because the governing class was dead or inactive.

Unknown - Jewish Encyclopedia

What Was the Black Death?

The black death first appeared in Italy in the year 1340 and was spread by sailors throughout Europe all the way up to England and Ireland. By the time it ran its course, the black death killed about two million people. The plague turned many bustling cities into ghost towns.

The sheer magnitude of destruction that the black plague caused is in itself a marker of modern society. Without the complex trade roots and high density of city populations, the black death probably would have started and ended in Italy. Or it might never have sprung up.

Symptoms

People who caught the black death generally died within a week or less. The symptoms started with a flu-like fever followed by vomiting. Then, pus-filled buboes appeared and parts of the skin turned purple from internal bleeding. During the last phase of the plague, the lungs filled with fluid and the patient died.

Ineffective Cures

Fear of the deadly Black Death resulted in many treatments that didn't work. These treatments seem illogical today, but in the midst of all the chaos and terror that surrounded the Black Death people were willing to try anything.

The physicians of the time simply had no idea of how to treat this deadly disease. They argued about how it was spread. Some said it was transmitted by sight, others argued that one could contract the disease just by thinking about it. Most physicians advised to purify the air with fire and good-smelling herbs and to avoid the sick at all costs. Some treated ill patients with blood-letting and pastes made of their own excrement, popular treatments at the time which didn't help anything.

One physician contracted the plague, and shockingly, survived by draining the pus from his own buboes. This cure may have worked, but it didn't stop other crazy cures from springing up.

During the middle ages the Church was a huge part of people's lives and the citizens of Europe wanted the Church to save them from the black death. The Church didn't have the power to do this and most of their priests were actually dead. Since it was the priest's job to deliver the last sacraments to the dying, most priests contracted the plague quickly. Many people lost faith in the Church and turned to other religious cults. One of these was the flagellants, a violent group that marched from town to town beating themselves as a sacrifice to God.  Despite these drastic measures the plague continued it's rampage.

Another awful measure taken to end the plague was a mass assassination of the Jews, who were said to have poisoned the wells causing the plague. Jewish people were tortured until they confessed to helping spread the plague and then they were burned at the stake. After all the Jews were gone, the black death still swept the land, but all the debts the townspeople owed to their Jewish neighbors were gone.

           Burning of Jews during the Black Death epidemic, 1349 Unknown - European chronicle, scanned and cropped from History of the Jewish People by H.H. Ben-Sasson, ed. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1976) p.564-565

Aftermath of the Black Death

Eventually in the late 14th century the plague ran it's course and slowly disappeared, but it certainly didn't leave without a trace. The black death began the end of serfdom because so many died that labor became scarce and the still living peasants could demand higher wages and better conditions. This resulted in the peasants becoming more powerful. Art also changed, it became more macabre and paintings featuring death or illness became the norm.

How Was the Black Death Actually Spread?

The BBC documentary (Medieval Apocalypse) that I watched to learn about the Black Death didn't mention how the disease was actually spread. This sparked my interest so I googled it. According to to The Washington Post and Forbes gerbils, not rats probably brought the disease over from Asia, but there is also some evidence that the Black Death may have been airborne. It's fascinating how we are still questioning how a disease that occurred over hundreds of years ago was spread. I think this just goes to show how complex our world is.

Cholera and How It Changed the World

Where does change come from? When I think about change, I tend to picture social activist groups or something like that, but when I read The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, I realized that change can be instigated by a much more elusive force: disease.

In London England 1854, a baby girl, just born to the Lewis family, died of cholera in a flat on Broad Street. Soon the entire neighborhood was ravaged by the disease which killed thousands of people by the time it ran its course.

Victorian England was not known for being medically advanced. Medical science at the time was practically the same as it was in the Middle Ages. Most people believed that all sickness was caused by "miasmas," or bad air. To quote Edwin Chadwick, a prominent political figure at the time, "All smell is disease."

John Snow, an anesthesiologist working in London at the time, was not convinced by the whole "all smell is disease" idea. He decided to investigate the cause of cholera himself.

After much strenuous snooping, John Snow was convinced that cholera was a water-borne disease. He, with help from local parishioner Henry Whitehead, traced the epidemic back to the Broad Street water pump. The water from this pump was contaminated by the cesspool the Lewis family had dumped the excrement of their sick baby daughter into. Almost everyone who drank from the Broad Street pump died of cholera.

This cholera epidemic was the beginning of a new age. Medical science advanced as people moved away from the old idea of disease and on to the new idea of disease-causing microbes. John Snow and Henry Whitehead created a disease map to show cholera's path of destruction. This map changed epidemiology, and it got people to start looking at the bigger patterns of a disease. The same type of maps are still used today. Cholera also changed waste management systems. People in London no longer piled up their excrement in house-size heaps that were shoveled right into the Thames. Complex sewer systems were built. Now safe sewer systems are a must for developed areas of the world.

This book was a fun read and the pages just flew by. I recommend it to all science and history nerds out there!

Piltdown Man

One of the worst, and funniest, mistakes in the history of science involves the case of Piltdown Man.

Group of men examining the skull of Piltdown man.
Painting by John Cooke, 1915. Used with permission under Creative Commons.

In 1912 the skull and jaw of a hominin were discovered in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England. The skull was old, but looked modern due to it's large size. The jaw, however, was brutish and primitive. Piltdown Man led scientists to believe that large brains developed before bipedalism. This idea caused many other bipedal hominin fossils to be classified as apes due to small skull size, when these fossils actually did belong to hominins.

By the 1930s more and more bipedal hominin fossils with small skulls were discovered making Piltdown Man seem like an unusual case.

Finally, in 1953 Piltdown Man was found to be a fraud! The skull came from a modern human, which explained the unusually large size, and the jaw was from an orangutan. The bones were stained to make them look older, and the jaw attachment was filed down so it was not obvious that the bones weren't even from the same species.

Another bone found in the same pit as Piltdown Man was carved in the shape of a cricket bat. The person who put the bones there probably thought this would give the joke away since no animal has cricket bat bones. But no, this bat-shaped fossil was thought to be real too!

The identity of the hoaxer remains a mystery, but a man named Martin Hinton is the main suspect. He was an expert on rodent fossils who worked at the Natural History Museum. He had the technical knowledge to carry out the joke, and he also had a grudge against his boss, Arthur Smith-Woodword, who became one of the main supporters of Plitdown man.

I found out about Piltdown Man in the book The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution by Henry Gee, and I just had to do a blog post about it. The case of Piltdown man illustrates how important it is to question and evaluate scientific discoveries before accepting them. It is hilarious how a joke like that went on for 41 years.

Cyanotype Printing Experiment (somewhat successful)

Last week I went to a program for teens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about photography. At first I was a little nervous about this workshop. Photography is not really my thing, and the only photos I take are for this blog. But then, I found out that part of the workshop was on the science of photo preservation. Once I found that out, I started to get excited. "Science," I thought "Yes, I can do this!"

My original cyanotype

In the photo preservation class, we made cyanotype prints. This printing process was invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842 when he realized that ferric (iron) salts, in combination with some other salts, could be reduced to a ferric state by exposing them to ultraviolet light. In this state, the salts could be used to create a blue and white image. In that same century, Anna Atkins published the first ever book with photographs, instead of drawn illustrations, using cyanotype prints of algae.

Cyanotype in sodium bicarbonate

I used lace, a feather, printed napkins, ribbons, and a leaf to make a design for my print. Cyanotypes can be exposed using sunlight, but in my class we used a UV ray machine since we were in a photography lab, and it happened to be late afternoon on a winter day when UV rays would be insufficient.

The bleached cyanotype

Cyanotypes have a blue background and white images. However I did not want my print to be just plain blue and white. Luckily one of the cool things about cyanotypes is that they can be bleached using sodium carbonate, or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and then dyed a new color with tea or coffee. The sodium carbonate or bicarbonate breaks down the iron so that the tannin in the dye can latch on more easily.

Cyanotype in the tea

I used sodium bicarbonate to bleach my print. The fact that sodium carbonate and bicarbonate bleach cyanotypes shows that base environments are not good for storing photographs, as they might fade the photos.

The dyed cyanotype.
Not exactly what I envisioned.

After bleaching my cyanotype, I soaked it in black tea for about 24 hours. The dying process did not go as well as I planned as the whole paper turned brown, not just the background.

Well, I guess I'll just have to try again to see if I can get a nice brown and white print!

Minik: The Lost Eskimo

Yesterday in my anthropology class at the American Museum of Natural History, I watched the film Minik: The Lost Eskimo. This film documented the story of five indigenous people the explorer Robert Peary brought from Greenland to New York City for study in the 1890s. The story is not a happy one, especially for the Minik and his family, but their story does mark the end of old anthropological methods and the beginning of modern ones.

Minik as a young boy in New York

All of the indigenous people died, except Minik and one twenty-three year old young man who was sent back to Greenland where he successfully re-joined his people.

Minik, however remained in New York under the care of the William Wallace who worked for the AMNH, and he was not able to return to Greenland until he had already lived most of his life in the US. Minik forgot his native language and he had a hard time re-connecting with his people. He longed for America and came back to the city. Minik was in a tough situation. He was an outsider both among his own people and in America.

Robert Peary

Minik's story illustrates the end of the age of the explorers like Peary and the end of the idea that the physical features of a group of people determines who they are. Today we know that someone's physical features do not determine the way they act, but in the 1800s and early 1900s even scientists believed that someone's physical body could determine their beliefs and actions.

I love learning about new advancements in any scientific field, but I also love to look back on the history of science and see how far we've come, in both scientific equipment and methods and in the way we think. Minik: The Lost Eskimo is a great film and it is only about an hour long. Anyone interested in history and science should check it out!