I'm archaeologist Andrew kinkela and I'm here to answer some of your questions on Twitter this is archeology support [Music] at Landy hoes what is the difference between archeology and paleontology paleontology is about very old things like dinosaurs and on the order of millions of years old archeology is about much more recent human past largely the last 10 000 years there is a wing of archeology that deals with ancient human ancestors where we're studying on the order of early human evolution from several million years ago at any XD asks what do you think is the most significant archaeological Discovery in recent years and why the find of Richard III which was amazing in a parking lot that just shows you that things change people move around people forget things that were once really really important another one on my top ten the find of the Shipwreck the endurance off the coast of Antarctica the endurance got lodged in the ice ultimately sank because the ice would melt and the ship would sink they had to use uh rovs remote operated vehicles in order to find this thing because of its depth at Athen and fanaco one asks y'all only use those little brushes at dig sites like that would drive me mad using that all day we use all different kinds of tools in archeology depending on the situation at hand the trial is the tool of the archaeologist you can dig fast with the long edge of it or you can be really precise with the pointy tip archeology is much more about touch sometimes than you would think and sound you could hear a little clink time to slow down so I take the trial put it down bust out the brush as I brush we can see the artifact at that point we can switch to the popsicle stick I can push and you don't have that metallic clink what we would do at this point pedestal the artifact we would dig around it we can say the artifact is 10 centimeters deep 20 centimeters from the West Wall 17 centimeters from the north wall and then we have the artifacts exact location this artifact is called a Clovis point a very specific tool to some of the first people to ever enter the new world at Chun Matthias asks honestly I still don't know how the Rosetta Stone Works the Rosetta Stone is one of the most important archaeological discoveries because it led to the cracking of Egyptian hieroglyphics Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 by Napoleon's science team that he brought with him in the town of Rosetta in Egypt what makes it so important is be because it says the same thing three times at the top it's in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics in the middle it's in demotic and at the bottom it's in Greek so you have this one piece that you can read and then you sort of have a key where you can start to build off of and figure out what the different symbols mean at I am najoju asks curious about these stone tools discovered from ancient man how rolled down a hill it would look different if I'm an ancient tool maker and I'm using a hammer Stone on this I'm gonna hit it really hard to get a flake to pop off is going to create what's called a bulb of percussion it's gonna create this divot also in terms of ancient stone tools they're going to use things like obsidian it's volcanic glass those types of stones can make a really really sharp edge on the flip side this is a hammer Stone it was very specifically sought after by ancient people for its qualities of not being too soft or too hard and you can use it to make good stone tools at zeph Wagner asks I don't know what the hell a dial of Destiny is but I sure as hell know what a dial is inherently less exciting than an arc a temple or a Grail the dial of Destiny is the new artifact that they're going to use in the new Indiana Jones movie what they're relating this to is something called the antikythera mechanism and its ability to track the rotate nation of planets over time I think what it really shows is an excellent use of math to make the gear so precise that it could at least work for a while at atang by Leah asks why do archaeologists excavate Graves again sometimes we come across them and we don't expect it I will say that is the most common way that we find human remains it's a little bit of a deep moment you do start to think about your own mortality human remains that you find in a grave tell you so much about the past the human skeleton itself can tell you how that person died did they have any diseases what was their social status it can tell you about the religion of the culture when we excavate something like a human burial we go very slow we work with local communities where you're going to store these human remains are you going to re-berry these human remains at goth Logan asks carbon dating thing work carbon 14 is an isotope it breaks down over time and what we can do is measure the rate at which it breaks down let's say after I'm filming this I walk off and I die in the parking lot my carbon 14 starts to go down 5730 years from today I will have half as much carbon 14 as I did in the beginning now if you add another 5730 years I have a quarter of what I had now you got to watch it because it only works on things that were once alive you cannot carbon 14 date a rock but for living things burials remains we can get a date for it at our Stevens asks lidar is being Advanced partly by its use in self-driving car research how long has it been used for archeology it's been used in archeology in the last 10 years or maybe more but lidar is a bunch of lasers shot down from a plane or a helic copter that flies over a site what it gets is really really specific Geographic and mapping data so as the plane flies over and shoots a bunch of lasers the trees actually blow a little so a couple of the laser beams will get down to the ground surface it used to be just prohibitively expensive these days the more and more we get of that the more projects actually have it due to the decreasing cost at Bryce P Wright asks how often do archaeologists have to think are these bones a crime scene or a discovery I did once work on a salvage archeology project where a construction crew had accidentally hit a family plot that was about 80 years old the skeletal material was still kind of supple you can really tell the difference if you're working with something that's thousands of years old because it's totally dry and it started to kind of Wither away so they're not bleach white like you would think they're sort of a dull Brown I still will call the coroner just to make double sugar at Katya zizing asks anyone else wonder how accurate a forensic facial reconstruction artist would be if they just had your skull to work off of we have to realize that it's not perfect in terms of facial reconstruction from a skull some things you can get are stuff like the cheeks or the cheeks higher or lower the eye sockets the brow Ridge the chin the teeth sometimes uh the the channel being more of a jutting chin but stuff like what was the overall shape of the nose you know the ears you're gonna go with the trends of the time so if you're working on a skull that's 4 000 years old and it's a male skull you're gonna put some sort of beard on it because they didn't have Bic Razors four thousand years ago archeology is literally three pieces of the Thousand piece puzzle at Malachi Waters asks do archaeologists just go to random places and be like I feel like there's something important here and then just start digging we only excavate after we've surveyed and mapped the location we are looking for the best possible places that archaeological sites might exist the ancient Maya would build on good soil if there's a forestry company or something who has made a map of the soil quality throughout the region I love getting that map because that makes my work that much easier I was working on a project in downtown L.A where they were replacing the sidewalk and they took up some of the concrete and there was a human skeleton right there this was a human skeleton that had been there for hundreds of years in the modern world we want to have archaeologists along with construction projects and building projects because they do find things like this from time to time at John engineer asks what's the most valuable artifact you have ever found I'm gonna go with an entire Mayan pyramid I found the pyramid through Google Earth at home I rolled the cursor over this area of the jungle and the altimeter would go blue blue blue and I thought you know next time I'm in that area of the Jungle I gotta go back there and check out that area and yes it actually was an ancient Maya pyramid at Joe six Totoro bear asks what archaeological find do you wish you had made and why the tomb of Tutankhamun Howard Carter in the early 1920s it took him several field seasons and he had to look for months through the entire Valley of the Kings at his last little survey Square that's where it was those artifacts are amazing stuff like wood that's 3 000 years old it looks like it was made last week they tell you so much about this little moment in time when this young king died unexpectedly at Jane loves bees asks do archaeologists even do sex estimations of skeletons yes and it's usually fairly easy the two best places to look are the skull and the pelvis for a male skull it tends to be more robust it'll just sort of be bigger overall a bit more angular although there's a lot of overlap on this so you have to look at different very specific parts of the skull in order to be sure I got this wrong once now it was a skeleton that had no head the pelvis looked very very narrow and I was like it's a guy once they got it to the lab and they could look more closely it was a female who had a very narrow pelvis in the field there's still parts of it covered with mud it's in a bad position but once it's in the lab it's under controlled conditions you can get really exact measurements you can just get a much better idea of what's going on at reactive Yuri asks I finished watching ancient apocalypse last night why do the experts dismiss Hancock's hypothesis as baseless ancient apocalypse is a Netflix series whose Central premise is there was a cataclysm about 10 000 years ago that destroyed a super Advanced super civilization and we only have bits and pieces of that left it didn't happen there is no evidence one of the best examples of this is the piriris map it was done in the early 1500s made by this guy named Perry Reeves pseudo-archaeologists like Graham Hancock say this is evidence that ancient people explored Antarctica it's just not it's proof that ancient map makers ran out of paper curved it around this is just a part of South America we can't use this today as serious scientific evidence it's not at motmot org asks did you know that the Maya believed that natural sinkholes called cenotes were sacred portals to the underworld I am a mayonist and I did my dissertation on the cenotes of Belize sometimes they were just used for water but other times they did sacrifice people into the cenotes from time to time I don't want you guys to think that human sacrifice happened like every weekend or something it didn't if the crops were going poorly and if there was no rain you may sacrifice somebody who was usually a captured Warrior from one of the other cities take this person to the edge of the Cenote you would slash them through their chest we have found human remains and some of the cenotes we have accounts from the Spanish of seeing this kind of thing happen in terms of my research we did find a little building right on the edge of the Cenote and we would call that a water Shrine and that would be the place where these kind of rituals would take place at Ethan's room asks why do archaeologists dress like that it depends on the environment you're working in for me in the jungle I'm gonna wear a light shirt I'm gonna have boots on I'm gonna bring a machete with me in order to cut through the jungle I'm gonna wear a hat protects you from the Sun you will also bring with you a bunch of different tools and in a backpack or a satchel a GPS unit if I had to bring one thing with me it would be a compass the compass will get you home GPS units are great they work on batteries and once you're out of batteries you're dead always trust your compass at Rocketeer 46 asks why are there so many archaeological discoveries of late are there more archaeologists or is it technology or what's the reason it is true that we tend to be finding more and more stuff we do have more modern technology like lidar there's also satellite technology that help us find new sites and we can see things like ancient trade routes but a major part of this is World overpopulation there is more and more excavation so we find new archaeological sites in every country of the world at Boyka D20 asks what do archaeologists not know or debate that you would most like an answer to when did human beings first enter North and South America the overwhelming evidence points to Asia across to Alaska and then down we have very good evidence up to about 16 or 17 000 years ago it's really hard to say after that you have sites way down in South America that can be quite old too 21 000 years or 40 000 years but the evidence isn't quite good enough a decade from now maybe we know more than we do now those are all the questions for today thanks for watching archeology support [Music]