Tune in to understand how new tech to find fake paintings, the mysterious reason a viking colony collapsed, and how doing chores might make kids smarter!
Tune in to understand how new tech to find fake paintings, the mysterious reason a viking colony collapsed, and how doing chores might make kids smarter!
Goodbye forgaries.
Water: the life force.
Chores for thinking.
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/fake-paint-real-carbon-vanishing-vikings-sweeping-smarts
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about new tech to find fake paintings, the mysterious reason a viking colony collapsed, and how doing chores might make kids smarter!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, did you know that art crime isn’t just in movies? Forgery is a serious issue in the art world. Some estimates say nearly half of all art on the market is forged or has an incorrect history.
NATE: That is shocking.
CALLI: And the problem is only getting worse! The efforts to copy famous works are getting more and more elaborate. Thankfully, the authentication systems are getting equally as elaborate, and the newest one might surprise you: carbon.
NATE: I’ve always wondered how art forgeries are sussed out. You’d think repainting a painting wouldn't look right, but some forgers are talented artists in their own right.
CALLI: The primary way to discover a forgery is through image analysis and x-rays, these tell us if a forgery is painted on top of another painting. But even these techniques are only moderately successful. But the newest innovation in detection technology is showing real promise, Radiocarbon dating.
NATE: Haven’t we talked about how researchers use that to date things like dinosaur bones?
CALLI: That’s right! All living things take in carbon. Importantly, that includes carbon-fourteen, a radioactive isotope. When a plant like linen or hemp dies, its carbon-fourteen keeps decaying. By measuring what’s left of it we can determine the age of a material. And do you know what linen and hemp are commonly used to make?
NATE: Are they also used in canvasses?
CALLI: Exactly!
NATE: Ahhh so we can accurately date a painting by measuring what it's painted on?
CALLI: Bingo. But there is an additional ripple here, in the 50s and 60s, the amount of radioactive carbon on earth increased dramatically.
NATE: Well why would that happen?
CALLI: Atomic bombs, and their testing throughout those decades. Those tests doubled the radiocarbon concentration in not only the atmosphere, but all living organisms that live within it.
NATE: But that “peak” must have started to fall off after the nuclear parties signed a treaty to limit testing, right?
CALLI: Yes! And in the decades that followed, much of that carbon decayed or was absorbed in large carbon reservoirs like the ocean. But not before leaving a mark in the art world. That spike gives us a really good anchor point in creating timelines. We can see that spike, and get a highly accurate date for modern forgeries. Most of the time, that spike can help us get their age to within a year
NATE: And this strategy is being used by inspectors in the field?
CALLI: As we speak! Investigators recently used radiocarbon dating to prove that two paintings supposedly from the early 20th century were actually only 70 years old at most!
NATE: But how do you do the tests? Does it damage the painting at all?
CALLI: Researchers used scalpels to remove a small piece of fiber from the canvas and processed it until they had one milligram of carbon. They pressed this carbon into a graphite puck and then used accelerator mass spectrometry which is a test that can tell them the amount of carbon fourteen. The results showed that the canvases were either created in 1956-1957 or after 2000. Either way, they weren’t the paintings they claimed to be.
NATE: That is so cool, and I’m glad this went well, but what happens if a team removes a piece of the artwork and they accidentally damage a real artwork?
CALLI: Well the tech is constantly improving, forensic analysts now only need just the tiniest samples of an artwork for accurate testing, it may even soon be possible to test individual layers of paint. Museums and owners are also becoming increasingly more open to this testing to address the prevalence of forgeries.
NATE: It will be amazing to see how something as simple as carbon changes the art world.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, I’ve got a kind of spooky story today about a big disappearance.
CALLI: We are now an investigative podcast, I like it.
NATE: For 450 years, southern Greenland was a hotbed for Norse settlers. They farmed, they hunted, they built relationships, and then one day they just vanished. It’s been one of archeology’s greatest mysteries: Why did the Vikings leave southern Greenland?
CALLI: Do we have any idea when they left?
NATE: Sometime in the late 14th century, but no one is quite sure why. The theories have been greatly debated: poor use of the land, plague, even pirates. One of the leading theories has always been that perhaps Greenland underwent a mass cooling that made farming impossible. But a study from Columbia University analyzed boulders in the area to see if they could tell us if the glaciers on greenland advanced or retreated in those times, but the results showed the glaciers didn’t seem to move or melt much at all during the Viking times.
CALLI: So then the climate stayed relatively the same? There’d be no big shift to push them out?
NATE: Right, and another study seemed to confirm these findings after analyzing the mud of lakes near those original settlements. The mud didn’t show signs of any long-term cooling trends either.
CALLI: So what was the next best theory?
NATE: Well the evidence in the mud they studied actually pointed to something else…drought.
CALLI: What in mud, which is wet dirt by the way, would point to drought?
NATE: Hydrogen isotopes from plant remains. Isotopes are versions of an element - in this case hydrogen - that have the same number of protons, but a different amount of neutrons.
CALLI: So it’s like a variation of hydrogen?
NATE: Yep! One of these variations is great for hinting at a drought. When weather gets drier, plants can lose water via an evaporation process that enriches them with deuterium - which is a hydrogen isotope that is rather heavy, it has a lot of neutrons. When researchers studied the leaves from the viking settlements, the presence of these isotopes indicated that the climate became progressively drier while the Vikings were there!
CALLI: And that had to make it way harder to grow enough food for those hearty Greenland winters. But wait, wouldn’t they still have a ton of water all over the place in snow and ice?
NATE: For sure, but in terms of rainfall, which is what you’d want for growing plants, the island can suffer some pretty severe water shortages. Even modern Greenland farmers regularly face these shortages. There’s even archaeological evidence that Norse farms might have tried to overcome these shortages by using irrigation channels to distribute water. But there is only so much they could do.
CALLI: So the Vikings tried to adapt to the land?
NATE: Oh absolutely, and there is other evidence that they might have even adapted their diets to be more marine-based to combat the loss of livestock to water shortages.
CALLI: That’s impressive. But they could only do it for so long I suppose. Can we use this same tech to learn about other areas as well?
NATE: We could use hydrogen isotopes from things like mud and plants to do scientific-historical analysis all over the world. It could soon be applied to areas and civilizations that have long baffled us.
CALLI: It’s so cool to see techniques from both archaeology and biology working together to give us a complete picture.
NATE: In fact it’s been deemed “paleoclimatology”. And even though it’s super new, it’s already showing plenty of promise.
CALLI: It already solved one big mystery, I can’t wait to hear what it solves next.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, I’ve got a story that I think parents are going to love…and kids are going to hate.
NATE: Ooh causing a rift in the house, what do you have?
CALLI: Well, a recent study came out revealing that making your children do chores on a regular basis can increase their cognitive abilities.
NATE: Oh, I always hated doing chores. How can cleaning your room make you smarter?
CALLI: Great question! Researchers say that chores provide a developing mind with structure. Specifically: chores can help a child develop skills in planning, switching between tasks, remembering instructions, and having better control over themselves. They found that on average, those children who regularly did chores like cooking, cleaning, even going outside to pull weeds, were far better students in school.
NATE: Do they know what is it specifically about chores that help children learn these skills?
CALLI: Well, doing chores successfully relies on something called “executive functioning.” These are skills that help you get things done, like I mentioned before, they’re things like planning and multi-tasking. Researchers found that when kids did chores regularly, they were more likely to develop these skills. It's kind of like in The Karate Kid how Daniel learned karate by waxing a car, but instead it's learning how to get things done more effectively in all aspects of your life, while you sweep the kitchen. You’re learning skills without realizing you’re learning them.
NATE: So there's some truth to that wax on wax off thing, interesting.
CALLI: This is the first study of its kind to find that chores are actually teaching children how to become more capable adults.
NATE: What did the study itself look like?
CALLI: Researchers targeted parents and guardians of 207 children, aged 5-13 years, and asked them to complete questionnaires on their child's engagement in household chores and their child's executive functioning. There were also controls for the influence of age, gender, as well as disability, but it was all pretty straight forward and relied on the questionnaire.
NATE: So does this apply to ALL chores? For example, if a kid wanted to take their dog for a walk, would that help structure their lives?
CALLI: Unfortunately, researchers found no connection between any pet-related chores and executive functions in children. That means that, although it’s certainly beneficial to develop a relationship with a pet, it won’t give the same boost to brain development
NATE: So was it just this one study? Or have there been other supporting studies?
CALLI: For now, just the one. And at the end of this study, researchers even said themselves that more research has to be done to delve deeper into the connection of chores and executive function. There is still a lot more we can unpack like asking questions to find if certain chores help more than others, or if one schedule works better than another. Either way, this could be a way to help children that are struggling with school develop more skills for success that could help them now, and later in life.
NATE: Not that I’d ever celebrate chores, but I love when science finds a way to help people, especially kids, succeed in their daily lives.
CALLI: oh and if that’s not enough, I can even tell you that studies have also found a correlation between doing chores and developing self-worth. You’re not just folding the laundry, you’re developing confidence.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Radiocarbon dating could soon be the new standard for discovering forged artwork. The method, which has extreme accuracy, could soon be used the world over to prove what is for real, and what is forgery.
CALLI: New research techniques have led to a possible answer for one of history’s greatest mysteries: the vanishing of the Greenland Viking settlements. By measuring hydrogen isotopes in mud from the area, researchers believe drought was the most likely cause of their demise.
NATE: New research shows that children can improve their performance in school by participating in daily household chores like cooking and cleaning. Doing these chores regularly can help a child develop executive functioning, the skills necessary to get complex tasks done.