1 00:00:00,830 --> 00:00:01,830 Ancient art. 2 00:00:01,830 --> 00:00:02,939 What’s to like? 3 00:00:02,939 --> 00:00:05,940 That it connects us to millennia of human history? 4 00:00:05,940 --> 00:00:06,940 Eh. 5 00:00:06,940 --> 00:00:10,210 The excuse to look at a buncha butts and feel like an intellectual? 6 00:00:10,210 --> 00:00:11,440 Ehh. 7 00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:14,679 How about the fact that tons of it’s fake, and most of the people who own it don’t 8 00:00:14,679 --> 00:00:15,679 have a clue? 9 00:00:15,679 --> 00:00:16,900 That’s pretty fun! 10 00:00:16,900 --> 00:00:19,830 Ancient art forgeries aren’t just the stuff of blatant eBay scams. 11 00:00:19,830 --> 00:00:23,830 They’re the stuff of—for example—the Met, which we know because former Met director 12 00:00:23,830 --> 00:00:26,880 and knockoff Inspector Gadget Thomas Hoving said so. 13 00:00:26,880 --> 00:00:31,470 Specifically, he said that 40% of the art he came across in his time there was probably 14 00:00:31,470 --> 00:00:32,470 fake. 15 00:00:32,470 --> 00:00:36,059 So basically, fake art is to the biggest, most well-funded collectors and institutions 16 00:00:36,059 --> 00:00:39,920 in the world as phishing emails are to your inbox—the only difference is that those 17 00:00:39,920 --> 00:00:42,649 fancy art people are clicking the link. 18 00:00:42,649 --> 00:00:45,010 But how is this such a big thing? 19 00:00:45,010 --> 00:00:50,000 First off, there’s loads of money in the art world, meaning a good fake can fetch millions. 20 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:53,730 And ancient art is actually pretty great for faking: While there are forgeries in every 21 00:00:53,730 --> 00:00:58,329 corner of the art market, ancient artifacts are mostly fetching delicious mid-market prices, 22 00:00:58,329 --> 00:00:59,769 which are perfect. 23 00:00:59,769 --> 00:01:03,519 Think about it: if you were to forge at the high end—a multi-million dollar Van Gogh 24 00:01:03,519 --> 00:01:06,100 or something—people might bother with the due diligence. 25 00:01:06,100 --> 00:01:10,520 If you were to mess around in the low end—trying to rip off my frog sculptures—you wouldn’t 26 00:01:10,520 --> 00:01:12,310 make enough money for it to be worthwhile. 27 00:01:12,310 --> 00:01:14,221 Also, with ancient art you don’t have to do the hands. 28 00:01:14,221 --> 00:01:16,600 Hands are really hard. 29 00:01:16,600 --> 00:01:20,850 All this means it’s way more common to forge ancient art than most people think, but it’s 30 00:01:20,850 --> 00:01:22,110 not way easier. 31 00:01:22,110 --> 00:01:26,710 Good forgers are as crafty as they are, well, crafty, and their combination of artistic 32 00:01:26,710 --> 00:01:31,820 ability and scientific savvy has managed to keep the fun police on their toes for generations. 33 00:01:31,820 --> 00:01:33,490 The first ancient art forgers were… 34 00:01:33,490 --> 00:01:35,360 other ancient artists. 35 00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:39,140 Ancient Phoenecians faked Egyptian stuff with gibberish hieroglyphs, and the so-called precious 36 00:01:39,140 --> 00:01:42,369 gems in King Tut’s tomb are just ancient colored glass. 37 00:01:42,369 --> 00:01:44,650 Yep, even Tut got tricked. 38 00:01:44,650 --> 00:01:48,270 That’s why nine-year-olds shouldn’t be pharaoh, and you can quote me on that. 39 00:01:48,270 --> 00:01:52,200 So people have been faking artifacts forever, and getting very good at it. 40 00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:56,241 They know which materials are easiest to get away with: stone is one, because if you can 41 00:01:56,241 --> 00:01:59,520 source it from the right place, it’ll pass every compositional test and you’ll only 42 00:01:59,520 --> 00:02:01,759 get caught if you’re a subpar sculptor. 43 00:02:01,759 --> 00:02:05,770 Gold is great too, because it doesn’t corrode, making it easier to fake age it than, say, 44 00:02:05,770 --> 00:02:10,160 bronze, which ages in layers of cupric chloride, brown patina, and crystal cupric oxide. 45 00:02:10,160 --> 00:02:14,129 They also know to replicate ancient production techniques, like making black paint by burning 46 00:02:14,129 --> 00:02:16,810 olive oil rather than using the Crayola stuff. 47 00:02:16,810 --> 00:02:19,190 Once a scam artist makes the fakes, they age them. 48 00:02:19,190 --> 00:02:22,879 That can mean anything from chucking them in an acid pit for a month to burying them 49 00:02:22,879 --> 00:02:25,910 underground and planting basil on top to give it root markings. 50 00:02:25,910 --> 00:02:29,920 They’ll also sometimes break and repair the pieces, feigning a lifetime of use. 51 00:02:29,920 --> 00:02:36,510 But remember: this is a game of cat and mouse, and the cats have tons of ways to spot forgeries. 52 00:02:36,510 --> 00:02:41,019 Sometimes it’s as simple as finding an impossibility: a Qatari Sheikh paid five or six figures for 53 00:02:41,019 --> 00:02:45,050 this “fifth century” unfired clay head, even though an unfired clay head still looking 54 00:02:45,050 --> 00:02:49,180 like a head after sixteen hundred years is about as likely as your head still looking 55 00:02:49,180 --> 00:02:53,830 like a head in sixteen hundred years: not very, unless there’s cryogenics involved. 56 00:02:53,830 --> 00:02:56,640 The pros also spot fakes from tiny stylistic anachronisms. 57 00:02:56,640 --> 00:03:00,849 Like, if you’re going to pass a human statue off as ancient Greek, it can’t have real 58 00:03:00,849 --> 00:03:06,180 human proportions—they constructed their human figures to a mathematical ideal of perfection. 59 00:03:06,180 --> 00:03:08,660 Not enough torso, and you can count it out. 60 00:03:08,660 --> 00:03:12,360 This is also how they cast Love Island, but that’s another video. 61 00:03:12,360 --> 00:03:14,530 Fakehunters also look at the wear and tear. 62 00:03:14,530 --> 00:03:19,209 Some artifacts, like this tiara, are suspected fake because all their damage is suspiciously 63 00:03:19,209 --> 00:03:22,879 located on unimportant, non-protruding parts of the piece. 64 00:03:22,879 --> 00:03:27,030 Fun police need a sharp eye for all this and more—or a sharp nose. 65 00:03:27,030 --> 00:03:29,769 In the 1800s, Egyptian art expert T.G. 66 00:03:29,769 --> 00:03:33,909 Wakeling insisted he could smell the ancientness of Egyptian wood, which was really effective 67 00:03:33,909 --> 00:03:38,630 for weeding out fakes… until forgers started buying up peasant mummies, boiling them, and 68 00:03:38,630 --> 00:03:43,049 dumping the juice onto their stuff to cheat his nose, which is a clever trick, but a waste 69 00:03:43,049 --> 00:03:44,510 of perfectly good peasant juice! 70 00:03:44,510 --> 00:03:47,099 What am I supposed to moisturize with now? 71 00:03:47,099 --> 00:03:48,819 Peasant… blood?? 72 00:03:48,819 --> 00:03:52,299 Once someone suspects a fake, there are a bunch of sciencey ways to check whether it’s 73 00:03:52,299 --> 00:03:54,329 really as old as it’s cracked up to be. 74 00:03:54,329 --> 00:03:58,810 Under UV light, legitimately old marble will glow yellow due to centuries of sun exposure, 75 00:03:58,810 --> 00:04:01,519 while younger marble will glow more purple. 76 00:04:01,519 --> 00:04:06,250 For anything that used to be alive—like wood, fibers, bone, whatever—you can radiocarbon 77 00:04:06,250 --> 00:04:09,890 date it by seeing how much of the Carbon 14 isotope is kicking around. 78 00:04:09,890 --> 00:04:14,470 That’ll tell you when the material was harvested, though not necessarily when it was made into 79 00:04:14,470 --> 00:04:15,689 a little horsey. 80 00:04:15,689 --> 00:04:20,040 For other materials, they do compositional analyses with X-Rays which can show—among 81 00:04:20,040 --> 00:04:22,810 other things—exactly where a piece of rock came from. 82 00:04:22,810 --> 00:04:27,230 If it’s not the same place the alleged ancient artists got their rocks from, that’s probably 83 00:04:27,230 --> 00:04:28,230 a fake. 84 00:04:28,230 --> 00:04:32,110 They even analyze the patina, or the buildup of dirt and grime on the piece. 85 00:04:32,110 --> 00:04:36,930 Forgies often attach patina with an artificial binder, while real old stuff is just genuinely 86 00:04:36,930 --> 00:04:41,600 grimy—like a dorm shower, or Elon Musk… well, before the breakup, I guess. 87 00:04:41,600 --> 00:04:45,460 But despite all these fake-spotting tools, forgeries are still everywhere. 88 00:04:45,460 --> 00:04:50,520 In that guy’s book, which came out in 1997, he names a bunch of things at famous museums 89 00:04:50,520 --> 00:04:53,560 that he thinks are fake, and tons of them are still on display! 90 00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:58,490 There are even fakes in this video—those weren’t my frog sculptures, one of my dumb 91 00:04:58,490 --> 00:05:00,280 writers is just starting a side hustle! 92 00:05:00,280 --> 00:05:01,280 What gives? 93 00:05:01,280 --> 00:05:06,330 Turns out, for all the incentive to make a fake, there’s very little incentive to spot 94 00:05:06,330 --> 00:05:07,330 one. 95 00:05:07,330 --> 00:05:09,039 Why would an owner want to know they got duped? 96 00:05:09,039 --> 00:05:13,570 Why would a seller check if their stuff’s fake, as long as it’s fetching real prices? 97 00:05:13,570 --> 00:05:16,940 The logic goes that what you don’t know can’t embarrass you… which is totally 98 00:05:16,940 --> 00:05:21,710 true except in the cases of open fly, spinach in teeth, and most other facets of being alive. 99 00:05:21,710 --> 00:05:27,050 But remember: the art industry is run by and for people who pay exorbitant sums to appear 100 00:05:27,050 --> 00:05:31,860 wealthy and cultured, and any art—even fake art—that keeps up that appearance is doing 101 00:05:31,860 --> 00:05:32,860 its job. 102 00:05:32,860 --> 00:05:36,830 Are we really shocked these folks bop mediocre stuff around in hopes that everyone will just 103 00:05:36,830 --> 00:05:37,830 assume it’s legit? 104 00:05:37,830 --> 00:05:39,160 It’s sort of their whole thing. 105 00:05:39,160 --> 00:05:40,160 So you know what? 106 00:05:40,160 --> 00:05:41,680 Go whip up some ancient art! 107 00:05:41,680 --> 00:05:42,680 Scam a rich clown! 108 00:05:42,680 --> 00:05:47,330 It’s not legal, but it is funny, and that’s so much more important. 109 00:05:47,330 --> 00:05:51,819 Since ancient times—I assume, I’m not really sure—there’s always been the problem 110 00:05:51,819 --> 00:05:53,760 of how to cook for one. 111 00:05:53,760 --> 00:05:57,720 It’s hard, you only have bad options—you can buy ingredients in the grocery store, 112 00:05:57,720 --> 00:06:00,919 but then you’re inevitably going to pay a ton and have extra that goes bad; you can 113 00:06:00,919 --> 00:06:04,600 make enough to have leftovers but then you’re eating the same thing again and again; you 114 00:06:04,600 --> 00:06:08,030 can order delivery but then you’re paying a huge amount; or you can have frozen food 115 00:06:08,030 --> 00:06:10,370 but that’s unhealthy and not very tasty. 116 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