Viking Was a Job Description, Not Heredity

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2020

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about how being a “Viking” was actually a career choice, not an ethnicity, why it’s easy to plant false memories, and how the pandemic has made birdsong more complex.

"Viking" was a job description, not heredity by Grant Currin

Helmets. (2020). National Museum of Denmark. https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/weapons/helmets/
Curry, A. (2020, September 16). ‘Viking’ was a job description, not a matter of heredity, massive ancient DNA study shows. Science | AAAS. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/viking-was-job-description-not-matter-heredity-massive-ancient-dna-study-shows
Margaryan, A., Lawson, D. J., Sikora, M., Racimo, F., Rasmussen, S., Moltke, I., Cassidy, L. M., Jørsboe, E., Ingason, A., Pedersen, M. W., Korneliussen, T., Wilhelmson, H., Buś, M. M., de Barros Damgaard, P., Martiniano, R., Renaud, G., Bhérer, C., Moreno-Mayar, J. V., Fotakis, A. K., … Willerslev, E. (2020). Population genomics of the Viking world. Nature, 585(7825), 390–396. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2688-8

It's Surprisingly Easy to Plant False Memories by Ashley Hamer

Scientists and Practitioners Don’t See Eye to Eye on Repressed Memory. (2013). Association for Psychological Science - APS. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/scientists-and-practitioners-dont-see-eye-to-eye-on-repressed-memory.html#.WRJKslMrKi4
And the Memory Wars Wage On. (2014, March 5). Nationalgeographic.Com. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2014/03/05/and-the-memory-wars-wage-on/
Loftus, E. F. (2020). Elizabeth F. Loftus | Elizabeth F. Loftus. Uci.Edu. https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/eloftus/
Creating False Memories. (2020). Washington.Edu. https://staff.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm

The Pandemic Has Made Birdsong More Complex by Steffie Drucker

Simon, M. (2020, September 24). How the Pandemic Transformed This Songbird’s Call. Wired; WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-pandemic-transformed-this-songbirds-call/
In San Francisco bay area, shutdown reduced anthropogenic noise, which changed birdsong quality. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/aaft-isf092120.php
Stokstad, E. (2020, September 24). When COVID-19 silenced cities, birdsong recaptured its former glory. Science | AAAS. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/when-covid-19-silenced-cities-birdsong-recaptured-its-former-glory
Derryberry, E. P., Phillips, J. N., Derryberry, G. E., Blum, M. J., & Luther, D. (2020). Singing in a silent spring: Birds respond to a half-century soundscape reversion during the COVID-19 shutdown. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abd5777

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from
0:05.2	Curiosity.com. I'm Ashley Hamer. And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today you'll learn how
0:09.8	being a Viking was actually a career choice, not an ethnicity, why it's easy to plant false memories and how the pandemic has given birds something complex to sing about.
0:19.0	Let's sing about some curiosity.
0:22.0	Ah, the Vikings!
0:24.0	If the word brings up images of blonde, burly, Scandinavian men in horned helmets, may be accompanied
0:29.3	by their blonde, burly wives and children in horned helmets?
0:32.9	Well, first off, the horned helmet thing
0:35.0	is almost certainly a myth.
0:36.9	Stop with the horned helmets, please.
0:39.3	You're embarrassing yourself.
0:40.6	But more importantly, new research
0:42.4	has turned the rest of that image on its head too.
0:45.0	The real Vikings are nothing like their popular depiction.
0:49.0	Researchers have spent the last 10 years collecting samples of genetic material from Viking burial sites across Europe.
0:55.4	They placed a special focus on Scandinavia, but also collected samples from Viking burial sites
1:00.7	as far as Italy and Ukraine.
1:03.0	Most of the burials took place during the Viking Age, which lasted from 750 CE to
1:08.0	1050 CE.
1:09.7	When all was said and done, the researchers managed to sequence 442 genomes. That DNA gives intimate
1:16.0	insight into the lives of people who lived more than a millennium ago. For instance
1:20.4	there's a site on a beach in Estonia where researchers uncovered four brothers
	...

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