http://www.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetview/treks/pyramids-of-giza/
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-29595359
This one probably counts as history: it's an animation of a thousand years of political geography in Europe, with border changes and the appearance and disappearance of various political entities.
I think it's a copy of the original promo video for the Centennia Historical Atlas (http://www.historicalatlas.com/); the current promo is better quality but covers a rather shorter period:
Some legal history this time: apparently some of the oldest surviving laws in England are due to be repealed. These are a couple of chapters of the Statute of Marlborough (passed 1267; see Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Marlborough)) relating to the power of distress (the right of a landlord to seize a tenant's goods in lieu of rent). The power of distress was abolished by a law passed in March this year, so the relevant chapters are now redundant. A BBC News article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30334812) has more details.
On a personal note, it's oddly pleasing to me that legislation so old is still in force; I think it appeals to my sense of tradition and historical continuity.
Don't we have a load of silly old laws though which are not in effect anymore? Like shooting a welshman with a bow if he is on your property or something?
I think you're thinking of the law that allows you to shoot a Scotsman as long as he is within the city walls of York and carrying a longbow. I think that's been repealed already though.
I've heard of similar ones allowing the shooting of any Welshman within bowshot of the walls of either Chester or Shrewsbury after sunset. I think it's not clear that there were ever actual laws to this effect; if there were, they have almost certainly been repealed at some point as conflicting with the law on murder.
Tom: your general point is right, though - there are various old laws still nominally in force but having no effect. The two Statute of Marlborough chapters are part of a package of over a hundred acts or parts of acts proposed for repeal, most of them being relatively recent.
I wonder what the most recent case is of someone actually doing one of these things without getting prosecuted for murder or something?
Quote from: Glaurung on December 08, 2014, 01:12:23 AM
I've heard of similar ones allowing the shooting of any Welshman within bowshot of the walls of either Chester or Shrewsbury after sunset. I think it's not clear that there were ever actual laws to this effect; if there were, they have almost certainly been repealed at some point as conflicting with the law on murder.
If I remember rightly, these were royal edicts given in a time of conflict and that later laws banning killing by a citizen made these invalid.
What amazes me most about this Marlborough Statute is that some of the rights it gives to tenants are still useful!
Quote from: TTG4 on December 09, 2014, 02:50:25 PM
What amazes me most about this Marlborough Statute is that some of the rights it gives to tenants are still useful!
That doesn't surprise me so much: I don't think the relationship between landlord and tenant has changed very much over time, even after 700 years. And we still rely on some of the rights from Magna Carta which is almost 800 years old.
Although Magna Carta as inscribed in law is newer: the Magna Carta wasn't formally adopted in law until after the Marlborough statutes IIRC.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2983404/Massive-tomb-Celtic-prince-unearthed-France-Exceptional-2-500-year-old-burial-chamber-reveals-stunning-treasures.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33436021
QuoteWhat may be the world's oldest fragments of the Koran have been found by the University of Birmingham.
Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence.
The pages of the Muslim holy text had remained unrecognised in the university library for almost a century.
http://www.history.com/news/archaeologists-unearth-intact-pre-roman-tomb-in-pompeii?cmpid=Social_FBPAGE_HISTORY_20150923_240461611&linkId=17281603
http://www.sciencealert.com/an-entire-ancient-island-has-been-rediscovered-in-the-aegean
http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/ancient-etruscan-text-may-reveal-identity-gods-and-deities
Sorry for the IFL link. I unfollowed them a long time ago.
Ooh, awesome :)
Meanwhile the biggest history yay of the past week has probably been the news that Palmyra may be in rather better shape than we feared - ISIS seem to have wrecked some gorgeous temples, but most of the Roman ruins are still standing fortunately.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/palmyra-ruins-not-destroyed-isis_uk_56faa7c2e4b0691b0c563a7c
And, nearer to home (at least for UK people), some more Roman ruins (a villa, to be specific) discovered by someone laying electricity cables in his garden! Apparently the site hasn't been touched for 1,400 years, so it's very rich archaeologically.
Details, as ever, on the BBC News site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-36062538).
There's a buried one in the village near my house in Norfolk that's only ever been partly excavated - I imagine there must still be really quite a large number across the UK (which presents certain difficulties in terms of long-term preservation).
Yeah I've got Roman ruins on my land too.
...that's rather more interesting, you might want to get someone to look at that :P
http://globalnews.ca/news/2785544/archaeologists-discover-skeletons-coins-in-ancient-pompeii-shop/?sf29605258=1
Nice looking coin, funny looking guy on it.
Is the edge misshaped due to being tumbled around in the ground? Surely not because then the markings and face would be deformed as well. Then it would seem they didn't make the thing perfectly round in the first place which doesn't make sense because they were perfectly capable of doing so.
I suspect two things:
- The rim has been hit against something hard at some point; it's gold so it would dent easily
- The coin has been "clipped", i.e. it's had bits cut off the edge to steal some of the gold. This would account for the irregular edge in the lower left quadrant in the picture.
That could be. Though it seems like most old coins have irregular edges even the non-gold ones.
It's that the coin wasn't made round - they could make round objects with moulds or whatever for jewellery, but most ancient & medieval coins were generally made by striking a blob of metal with a marked die & hammer, which doesn't lead to nice perfect round coins but is a considerably quicker & cheaper process than pouring molten metal into moulds.
http://www.seeker.com/pompeii-victims-bodies-revealed-in-scans-photos-1770334701.html?slide=qNxQAZ
Better teeth than modern day British. ;D
Today is D-Day.
Quote from: comrade_general on August 08, 2016, 12:08:08 AM
Better teeth than modern day British. ;D
I am highly offended by this
As an English person - to have our distinctive brown wonky teeth bundled in with the boring white straight teeth of the Welsh and the Scottish
Sorry m8 :(
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944 ! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle.
We will accept nothing less than full Victory!
Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
So this is really cool:
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/02FA/production/_104826700_egypt14.jpg)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-46580264
QuoteArchaeologists in Egypt have made an exciting tomb discovery - the final resting place of a high priest, untouched for 4,400 years.
Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, described the find as "one of a kind in the last decades".
The tomb, found in the Saqqara pyramid complex near Cairo, is filled with colourful hieroglyphs and statues of pharaohs. Decorative scenes show the owner, a royal priest named Wahtye, with his mother, wife and other relatives.
Archaeologists will start excavating the tomb on 16 December, and expect more discoveries to follow - including the owner's sarcophagus.
Indeed.
Another fun one:
Quote(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/108D2/production/_105049776_foto3.jpg)
Archaeologists in Mexico say they have made an important discovery, uncovering a temple to Xipe Tótec - the pre-Hispanic "Flayed lord".
Historically, throughout the region, priests paid tribute to the deity by wearing the skin of human sacrifices.
Items relating to the deity were discovered at a site in Puebla state, and believed to date from 900-1150 AD.
Mexican archaeologists say the find may be the earliest dedication to Xipe Tótec discovered in Mexico.
Worship of the God, who represents fertility and regeneration, is known to have later spread throughout Mesoamerica during Aztec times.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-46746842
It puts the lotion on its skin!
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/17/nile-shipwreck-herodotus-archaeologists-thonis-heraclion
QuoteIn the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt and wrote of unusual river boats on the Nile. Twenty-three lines of his Historia, the ancient world's first great narrative history, are devoted to the intricate description of the construction of a "baris".
For centuries, scholars have argued over his account because there was no archaeological evidence that such ships ever existed. Now there is. A "fabulously preserved" wreck in the waters around the sunken port city of Thonis-Heracleion has revealed just how accurate the historian was.
"It wasn't until we discovered this wreck that we realised Herodotus was right," said Dr Damian Robinson, director of Oxford University's centre for maritime archaeology, which is publishing the excavation's findings. "What Herodotus described was what we were looking at."
This seemed pretty cool :)
portugal yeah Herodotus coming through in a clinch.
Nice report on a Saxon tomb:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-48203883
QuoteThe remains of the timber structure, which would have measured about 13ft (4m) square and 5ft (1.5m) deep, housed some 40 rare and precious artefacts.
Among them was a lyre - an ancient harp - and a 1,400-year-old box thought to be the only surviving example of painted Anglo-Saxon woodwork in Britain.
Gold coins, the gilded silver neck of a wooden drinking vessel, decorative glass beakers and a flagon believed to have come from Syria were also found.
Sneat.
Big bling. Guess that Essex stereotype is pretty old.
75th anniversary of D-Day
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/idme-wordpress-military/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/06203419/d-day-graphic1.png)
Lots of really interesting interviews with the veterans as well. So few of them left now...
QuoteDNA study reveals Ireland's age of 'god-kings'
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/1A69/production/_112916760_ngwinterlight.jpg)
DNA has been used to confirm the existence of an elite social class in the Stone Age inhabitants of Ireland.
It's one of the earliest examples of such a hierarchy among human societies.
A key piece of evidence comes from an adult male buried at the 5,000-year-old Newgrange monument; his DNA revealed that his parents were first-degree relatives, possibly brother and sister.
He was one member of an extended "clan" that was buried at impressive stone monuments across Ireland.
Rest of article at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53059527
It amuses me that the title takes the "AGE OF GOD KINGS" line and then is like "yeah so basically what we meant was that they had some SUPER inbred aristocrats". :)
This one's fascinating:
QuoteAncient Americans made epic Pacific voyages
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/1454F/production/_113297238_062348117.jpg)
New evidence has been found for epic prehistoric voyages between the Americas and eastern Polynesia.
DNA analysis suggests there was mixing between Native Americans and Polynesians around AD 1200. The extent of potential contacts between the regions has been a hotly contested area for decades. In 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl made a journey by raft from South America to Polynesia to demonstrate the voyage was possible.
Until now, proponents of Native American and Polynesian interaction reasoned that some common cultural elements, such as a similar word used for a common crop, hinted that the two populations had mingled before Europeans settled in South America. Opponents pointed to studies with differing conclusions and the fact that the two groups were separated by thousands of kilometres of open ocean.
Alexander Ioannidis from Stanford University in California and his international colleagues analysed genetic data from more than 800 living indigenous inhabitants of coastal South America and French Polynesia. They were looking for snippets of DNA that are characteristic of each population and for segments that are "identical by descent" - meaning they are inherited from the same ancestor many generations ago.
"We found identical-by-descent segments of Native American ancestry across several Polynesian islands," said Mr Ioannidis. "It was conclusive evidence that there was a single shared contact event."
Rest of article: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53338203
I wish the Medieval Indonesia guy had not deleted his real blog, created a Medium account then gotten too busy to keep writing and deleted it too. https://medium.com/@siwaratrikalpa
I also think that for an up-and-coming premodern historian, archaeogenetics would be a great skill set to focus on, because interpreting studies is hard and there are a lot of overhyped papers and historians need people they can trust to tell them which ones to look closely at.
Yeah, I think to some extent he just ended up with a ton of pressure from his stuff getting too big: he had huge numbers of social media followers and I think he got dragged down by it as well as that making him much more unnerved about older bits of his work being so widely read. It is definitely a pity.
Yeah, archaeogenetics is something we need more people doing, though we also really need good people doing it because I really don't want to think about what some historians would try doing with those methodologies...
Quote from: Jubal on July 10, 2020, 12:41:47 PM
Yeah, I think to some extent he just ended up with a ton of pressure from his stuff getting too big: he had huge numbers of social media followers and I think he got dragged down by it as well as that making him much more unnerved about older bits of his work being so widely read. It is definitely a pity.
Yeah, archaeogenetics is something we need more people doing, though we also really need good people doing it because I really don't want to think about what some historians would try doing with those methodologies...
Oh wow again there is a whole story happening on closed social media where I can't follow it. It is just a headache. I wish that when people leave the real Internet they would leave a note why and a forwarding address.
When someone deletes a website that I have in my memory, they are deleting part of my mind. When they break incoming links, they are destroying my work.
Its frustrating because we have 150 years of quack racial 'science' that fell apart on inspection ... but that does not mean it is fair to ignore the new data or all the hard work that has gone in to collecting datasets of ancient and medieval DNA. But I think you really need someone who understands statistics, understands genetics, and understands historical argumentation to sort it out. In Pereltsvaig and Lewis vs. Gray, Atkinson, et al. (https://bookandsword.com/2017/01/28/some-thoughts-on-facts-and-fallacies-in-historical-linguistics/), there was one or two small points where the linguists may have not fully understood the math or the conventions of the glamour mag Gray and Atkinson published in (although their criticisms as a whole were very patient and devastating). The idea that some Polynesians made it to South America seems plausible and its not an idea which Europeans are highly motivated to 'reason'.
Edit: A.J. West seems to have another account at https://medium.com/@IndoMedieval I have made so many mistakes in life, but one of my best decisions was never creating a birdsite account.
Does everyone here know about sartor.cz with their copies of medieval brocades and cloths-of-gold? They offer silk (for working garments) and synthetics (for cheaper looking-pretty garments) https://www.sartor.cz/44-historical-textiles
Oh neat! Not come across that before.
I actually want to get some reasonably medieval looking wear (ideally high medieval as that's my period) largely for cosplay purposes, doing medieval storytelling, that sort of thing. I'm not sure where to start looking on that front though.
I think Timothy Dawson does pretty good Middle Byzantine replicas although his theories about armour are peculiar (and an Orthodox icon painter I knew always said that the point of the icon is to copy an earlier icon as best as you can not to reproduce the world you see with your eyes) http://www.levantia.com.au/index.html
For the High Medieval Franks there are the books by Sarah Thursfield, Dorothy K. Burnham, and Katrin Kania https://bookandsword.com/resources/fashion-in-the-age-of-datini/ and of course the kaftans and hose from graves in the Caucasus https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Mans_Caftan_Leggings_from_Caucasus_8_to_10_C_Conservation_The_Metropolitan_Museum_Journal_v_36_2001
Richard Culinan has something on Abbasid clothing and there are lots of resources for Norse clothing although I think a lot of the finds are very fragmentary https://richardcullinan.wordpress.com/2016/12/17/an-overview-of-mens-abbasid-9th-10th-century-persian-clothing/
For ready-to-wear Medieval Design in Italy is better than average http://www.medievaldesign.com/eng-prodotti-uomo.asp?form_chiave=28 but if you can use a straightedge and a needle or a sewing machine you can make something work for the high middle ages. The internet used to be great for this stuff (Karen Larsdatter, ImaReal, Cariadoc's Miscellaney, Stefan's Florilegium) but now all the geeky people are screaming about politics, doing things face to face and offline, or pushing their personal brand with lots of photos and videos on some giant company's servers.
Some of us are screaming about politics and still doing the other stuff, in fairness :)
Thank you for the links! I wish I could spend time actually sewing things, but I lack the time and indeed the space to store a sewing machine and fabric rolls and I'm not sure how well my nerve-damaged hands would hold up to the job. Though conversely, actually buying this stuff is always costly. A conundrum :/
Sometimes in ancient history we can move the first attestation of something back almost 2000 years in one jump: like when the split tallies from Achaemenid Bactria (probably modern Afghanistan) were published. Previously it had been thought that tally sticks were a medieval invention but there are other ancient references once they knew to look for them.
Henkelman, Wouter F. M. / Folmer, Margaretha L. (2016) "Your Tally is Full! On Wooden Credit Records in and after the Achaemenid Empire." In Kristin Kleber and Reinhard Pirngruber (eds.), Silver, Money and Credit: A Tribute to Robartus J. van der Spek on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (NINO: Leiden) pp. 133–239 https://www.academia.edu/28154769/Your_tally_is_full_Credit_records_in_and_after_the_Achaemenid_empire
In 2015, they discovered that the temple of Kukulcan in Chichén Itzá has a friggin' cenote for foundations https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300348163
Prof. Dr. Martin Rundkvist in Sweden is live-blogging his excavations of the platform mound at Aska, Östergötland, Sweden https://aardvarchaeology.wordpress.com/category/fieldwork/ (his birdsite has a Swedish version but the blog has weekly updates)
Not sure if this is really history or science, but it's interesting either way - the 1940s British design for a space-suit which was never used (and might well not have worked) but someone did build one more recently. And whatever its actual capabilities, it looks *fantastic*. It even has a cape!
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfjHPLTWoAAaNH-?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
More info at:
https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/the-bis-lunar-spacesuit/
That is amazing. I like the helmet especially.
It looks like something a scifi costume designer might have come up with!
Fake History Hunter has a pretty good list of myths about the middle ages, its a little bit 'web research based' and I can't find an "about the author" but his / her / their answers look OK https://fakehistoryhunter.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/medieval-myths-bingo/
On a lighter note, Rejected Princesses has an Armenian folk-tale about Queen Anahit (https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/anahit).
Edit: And wow, the creator seems to have been having a rough time (https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/full-width/wheredyougo) with some of the things which are portugaled-up about social media culture and US un-portugalling-society culture.
Quote from: Jubal on August 18, 2020, 05:46:20 PM
Not sure if this is really history or science, but it's interesting either way - the 1940s British design for a space-suit which was never used (and might well not have worked) but someone did build one more recently. And whatever its actual capabilities, it looks *fantastic*. It even has a cape!
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfjHPLTWoAAaNH-?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
More info at:
https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/the-bis-lunar-spacesuit/
As a realist (for thematic reasons on this post) I say meh
but as a warhammer fan
GIB NOW
Speaking of '40s technology, the tank museum in Bovington, UK has a cheerful video on the history of their Tiger-I, number 131 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xzG_rRngs8), and how amateur scholarship, oral history, and archival research let them correct the story of how and by whom it was disabled (a round hit the junction between turret and ring and the crew bailed out).
From 2019, a grant-funded project to explore records at the city of Aberdeen as inspiration for computer games Playing in the Archives: Game Development with Aberdeen's Medieval Records (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/12911/).
They are preparing a Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/commonprofytgames/strange-sickness (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/commonprofytgames/strange-sickness)
Oo interesting. I'll be curious in seeing how that goes!
(That modification was me correcting the kickstarter link by the way, the old one took me to 404 page)
Graeme and Felicite Wylie's caravel SV Notorious in Australia of 58 tonnes displacement
Brisbane Times 2015 (https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/replica-of-500yearold-portugese-caravel-ship-docks-in-brisbane-river-20150702-gi3vbs.)
Wikipedia s.v. Notorious(ship) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notorious_(ship))
Out and About in the Otaway YouTube channel walkthrough (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhABSaRURHQ)
The Medieval Views Virtual Arts festival kickstarter looks like it was pitched too high for the author's fundraising capacity https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/drdknight/medieval-views-virtual-arts-festival
I'm not sure that counts as a yay! But yes, it's a pity, I think Dayanna is great and it's disappointing that we can't get these sorts of community efforts better funded. I'm not sure that seeing things as pitched too high for one's fundraising capacity is the right way to consider it - you have to pitch events at the level needed to actually fund them, and see where you can get your fundraising capacity (which is a function of the project itself, personal linkages, institutional access, and a lot of luck) in light of that. I am one of the backers, anyhow, and I hope it'll inspire future efforts even if failing this time round.
Quote from: Jubal on December 10, 2020, 05:45:47 PM
I'm not sure that counts as a yay! But yes, it's a pity, I think Dayanna is great and it's disappointing that we can't get these sorts of community efforts better funded. I'm not sure that seeing things as pitched too high for one's fundraising capacity is the right way to consider it - you have to pitch events at the level needed to actually fund them, and see where you can get your fundraising capacity (which is a function of the project itself, personal linkages, institutional access, and a lot of luck) in light of that. I am one of the backers, anyhow, and I hope it'll inspire future efforts even if failing this time round.
The serial crowdfunding people I know describe it as a "fists get you a brick, brick gets you a knife, knife gets you the keys" situation: you create a series of projects, each calibrated so that you are confident your audience will fund it and probably reach the stretch goals, and use each project to build your audience so you can propose more expensive projects. As always, I describe the best practices of people with demonstrated success in an area as far as I understand them, not the only way of doing things.
I think that works with some types of project and not others... and where it's larger projects, one has to account for e.g. individuals' ability to input labour for free. One suspects that with the "building it up" approaches there has to be a lot of loss-leader work in there, which requires an input level of financial stability on the part of the person doing it.
Some academics in the last century had the barbarous custom of letting people claim 'dibs' on topics for decades without publishing their results (with the results that often they never did publish and their knowledge died with them).
The death of Alwyn Ruddock in 2006 released a flood of archival research on John Cabot / Giovanni Caboto and his voyages to the New World (https://dwhauthor.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/rewriting-history-alwyn-ruddock-and-john-cabot/) tracing her unpublished steps and hints she shared with colleagues.
Glaurung edit: link URL fixed.
Oh dear. That's a rather depressing story. I can see that there's a sort of professional courtesy involved, given the respect accorded to first publication in the academic world, but I think that courtesy carries with it a duty to actually get on and publish, even if that publication isn't perfect. At least with the hints that Ruddock provided, it's possible for others to follow in her footsteps, and find the original documents again.
UPDATE
Also, I'm reminded somewhat of Tolkien, and his long struggle with the material that eventually became the
Silmarillion - worked and reworked during his lifetime, but never quite brought to publication. But at least Tolkien wanted it published, even after his death, and had ensured that someone was in place to make it happen. Similarly in his academic work: the book
Finn and Hengest came out of material that Tolkien first presented in lectures in the 1930s, but was happy to hand over to Alan Bliss when he (not aware of Tolkien's lectures) started research along the same lines in the 1960s. Bliss's preface gives a good example of the professional courtesy I was thinking of:
Quote from: Alan BlissNearly twenty years ago, I read to the Dublin Mediaeval Society a paper entitled "Hengest and the Jutes". Later, in conversation with colleagues, I discovered that nearly all my conclusions had been anticipated many years previously in lectures by the late Professor J. R. R. Tolkien, which I had not heard; it was therefore impossible for me to publish my paper. On my next visit to Tolkien, in 1966, I explained the situation to him; a few days later, he wrote to me offering, with characteristic generosity, to hand over to me all his material on the story of Finn and Hengest, to make what use of it I wished.
Yes, I think its reasonable to give someone a monopoly on a piece of evidence for some years while they put a publication together, but not for decades. The way it often works in European archaeology today is that to get your next grant to excavate, you have to show that you published your last excavation to a basic standard. That avoids the problem where someone excavates a site, says they will publish it when they retire, and never get around to that so its as bad as if the site was looted. And I understand ordering all drafts, unfinished books, and private correspondence destroyed upon one's death, but doing the same for notes, transcribed sources, etc. seems a very strange choice!
IIRC, D. Obbink made use of this kind of professional courtesy to hide his various shenanigans (https://brentnongbri.com/2020/10/30/more-on-dirk-obbink-and-the-provenance-of-the-sappho-papyrus/) and alleged crimes (https://rogueclassicism.com/2020/04/16/dirk-obbink-and-stolen-p-oxy-allegations-some-food-for-thought/)
A key turn in the creation of scientific history was when Leopold von Ranke popularized the idea of searching archives for sources and not just reading what other scholars had written. Looking at contemporary documents and letters often gave a completely different picture of events than reading stories by literari decades or centuries after the fact. In the 1990s, that tradition continued by explaining one big reason why the German generals stuck with Hitler: he had been paying them monthly and annual gifts as long as he was satisfied with their political loyalty. English Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery_of_senior_Wehrmacht_officers) and the German book which was the first to lay out the evidence in one place (https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-2419).
I found this interesting: how the "spiral staircase as defensive feature" myth was created by a late nineteenth/early twentieth century art critic and fencer:
https://triskeleheritage.triskelepublishing.com/mediaeval-mythbusting-blog-2-the-man-who-invented-the-spiral-staircase-myth/
That was a myth? My whole life has been a lie!
"Historians: ruining fun since Herodotus let out the truth about Helen and Paris?"
I only realised it was a myth like two and a half or three years ago and I'm a medieval historian...
Neurotypical people in similar situations often behave in similar ways, with just the names and the rationalizations varying. Gwynne Dyer felt that debates about whether Canada should fight in Afghanistan sounded a lot like debates in 1939, 1914, and 1898. A communications professor has written an essay on the time that radio stations deplatformed anti-Semite, pro-Nazi Father Charles Coughlin (https://theconversation.com/that-time-private-us-media-companies-stepped-in-to-silence-the-falsehoods-and-incitements-of-a-major-public-figure-in-1938-153157) in 1938.
At first that was not a big deal since he had a newspaper and friends who were willing to print his rants about Jewish capitalist socialists. So eventually the government turned the same weapon against him which they turned against people sharing information on contraception (and which state governments had turned against anyone criticizing slavery), banning his newspaper from the mail. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/charles-e-coughlin) has a summary of his career.
Deborah King says that Oxford will not be prosecuting recently retired Oxford University Professor Dirk Obink, who was arrested after Oxford papyri he had had exclusive access to turned up in an American private collection. So it looks like there will be no full and open investigation. I have heard some shady things about how Oxford and Cambridge interact with state power in the UK.
Parts of Greek and Roman Studies are deeply intertwined with the art market and all the lying and cheating and theft-for-hire that goes on there.
Hobby Lobby has now sued Dirk Obbink for the USD 7m they paid him. They have published an email from him in 2017 where he says that he "accidentally" sold them papyri belonging to his employer and wants to pay them back, and say that the money never arrived https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/hobby-lobby-oxford.pdf
'Tis sport to have the engineer / hoist with his own petard
The publication of hundreds of moulds from 13th century Magdeburg, Germany is helping pewterers work more efficiently today https://www.billyandcharlie.com/a-surprising-mold-from-magdeburg/ Shiny!
Ooh that is interesting!
Also, a recent one: Turkish archaeologists think they've found the site of Manzikert. Not looked into this enough to have any sensible thoughts on whether they're right, but it is interesting regardless:
https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/weapons-find-points-to-seljuk-byzantine-battle-site-in-turkey/news
Archaeologists have found the first ancient warship outside of Sicilian waters at Abu Qir Bay in Egypt ("battle of Abourkir Bay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Qir_Bay#Battle_of_the_Nile)" fame) https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/archaeologists-find-ancient-egyptian-warship-sunk-near-alexandria/
I think the title on this one speaks for itself: A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3).
It's a detailed, meticulous report on the results of 15 years of excavations, and the evidence that led them to this striking conclusion.
Wow, I had not heard of that one!
It seems like it is getting pushback on birdsite, but corporate social media and group blogs attracts a lot of "talking points for people with brains." I am disturbed by the effect this has on our systems for building consensus based on testing claims, because people are speaking with their authoritative professional voice but not bothering to use those slow thoughtful ways of evaluating claims within their area of expertise. Some of those pushbacks makes blatantly false claims about the article (no, the authors do not say Tall el-Hamman is biblical Soddom). I hope some of those criticisms turn into actual blog posts with footnotes.
Nature is a very unreliable venue on archaeology and philology, but on first glance it looks like a properly formed article.
Quote from: dubsartur on September 23, 2021, 10:36:36 PM
Nature is a very unreliable venue on archaeology and philology, but on first glance it looks like a properly formed article.
Agreed, I wouldn't normally expect an archaeological excavation to be reported in
Nature, but this is very much not a normal excavation. Analysing the debris must have required expertise well outside the usual archaeological repertoire, and the conclusion seems like exactly the sort of thing that would appear in
Nature if it had been found by any means other than archaeology.
Quote from: Glaurung on September 24, 2021, 12:29:12 AM
Quote from: dubsartur on September 23, 2021, 10:36:36 PM
Nature is a very unreliable venue on archaeology and philology, but on first glance it looks like a properly formed article.
Agreed, I wouldn't normally expect an archaeological excavation to be reported in Nature, but this is very much not a normal excavation. Analysing the debris must have required expertise well outside the usual archaeological repertoire, and the conclusion seems like exactly the sort of thing that would appear in Nature if it had been found by any means other than archaeology.
And it does seem like the analysis involves people from many different specialties, its not "a physicist has reinvented the field of epidemic modelling" or "a biologist has reinvented historical linguistics."
Some of the people on social media are complaining that the archaeologists are from two places on the edge of academe (Veritas International University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritas_International_University) in California and the non-accredited Trinity Southwest University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Southwest_University) in New Mexico), but almost all archaeology in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan is funded by sectarians. That is not really any stranger than the fact that most archaeology in Denmark is funded by Danes! Nation-states have an ideological commitment to seeing people who lived in their territory as their spiritual ancestors, and worshipers of the God of Israel have an ideological commitment to see the ancient Jews as spiritual ancestors. And this paper seems to be independent from the archaeologists.
I may give the paper another read on the weekend but I don't have the expertise to evaluate most of the details.
Dr. Dirk Obbink has not responded to the summons in the USA, so Holiday Lobby now has the right to claim USD 7m from him. Unfortunately, that means that there will not be a trial in a country where Oxford can't sweep uncomfortable revelations under the rug (he may still face trial in the UK). https://brentnongbri.com/2021/12/03/update-on-hobby-lobby-vs-obbink-case/ I want to know who swindled him out of the money he was paid for selling other people's papyri, and where the other missing papyri are.
For Jubal: wife-and-husband team Digital Hammurabi has a chat with an Egyptologist about a new game called Assassin's Creed: Origins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG5NmoA3rYo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG5NmoA3rYo) (he liked it) They also have an interview with Bart Ehrman on textual criticism of the New Testament https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MtfAJsbqLA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MtfAJsbqLA)
Ooh, that reminds me I was meant to be writing up my paper from the Egyptology conference in the middle of last year. I'm not sure how to turn my rather short remarks into a five thousand word minimum piece, but we'll see.
This review of a book about stories and human culture is really quite funny in its utterly unrelenting brutality to the work in question:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/books/review/the-story-paradox-jonathan-gottschall.html
Some historians have finally come out with a response to Pinker's Better Angels: The Darker Angels of our Nature (https://www.amazon.com/Darker-Angels-Our-Nature-Refuting/dp/1350140597) I hope they picked 17 quantitative thinkers, some of the reviews did not focus on Pinker's many empirical, epistemological, and logical fails but on nonsense like "well, have you considered that because of population growth the absolute numbers of deaths are increasing (https://www.popmatters.com/where-angels-fear-tread-pinker-2495866577.html)?"
The dramatic decline in violence is obviously correct, but Pinker is not competent to show it.
Tod the cutler and Matt Easton have some fun with a video playing around with javelins with throwing-loop (Latin amentum, Classical Greek ankylē), fletched javelins, and Late Roman lead-weighted war darts (plumbatae) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSIrR0Jo09Y
Over on the Bronze Age Centre, I posted a summary of the woods used to make spears in prehistoric Britain. As far as I can tell, its taboo for archaeologists in many countries to publish the interesting bits of a spear (the shaft) or record which wood was found in the socket of the spearhead.
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/bronze_age_center/materials-of-bronze-age-british-spears-t2107.html
I'd not read about Ozette before stumbling across this BBC article - not hugely far from your neck of the woods, right, dubsartur, albeit that it's the southern side of the border?
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220605-ozette-the-us-lost-2000-year-old-village
I thought this was interesting, on new archaeological finds expanding the scope of what people know about Tartessos: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220727-the-iberian-civilisation-that-vanished
A British-Lebanese artist is translating and publishing Arabic treatises on painting and inkmaking from the Abbasid period (750-1258) https://majnouna.com/
The Museum of the Bible in the USA has returned another looted artifact: a bible from circa 1100 stolen from a monastery by Bulgarian forces in 1917 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/arts/design/museum-of-the-bible-looted-gospel.html
(as an aside; I think the early history of independent Bulgaria should be better known: they had 20 years of military power due to rigorous conscription and arms-buying at the beginning of the 20th century, kind of like Thebes in the 4th century BCE)
Charles Oman's histories are very readable and very broad but also very unreliable (he studied under Stubbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stubbs) but he was an English teller of tales not a German scientific historian). This article on the Battle of Beneventum (https://www.ageofdatini.info/essays/give-point.html) in 1266 gives an example of the kind of thing he got wrong.
I don't do podcasts much except just about keeping up with listening to Monster Man, but for those who do, the CEU medieval podcast might be of interest: my former colleague Maria Vargha is in the latest episode.
http://ceumedievalradiopodcast.ceu.hu/?name=2022-12-09_past_perfect_with_maria_vargha_9_12_2022.mp3
Kings and Generals released this video on the reign of David 4th of Georgia and the battle of Didgori, I thought it may be of interest considering the area of study of our good Joobs.
https://youtu.be/c-qi9dPI_Vw
Ooh, I still need to get round to watching that Didgori video.
This is interesting: a team have deciphered a set of letters by Mary, Queen of Scots, according to Ars Technica:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/lost-and-found-code-breakers-decipher-50-letters-of-mary-queen-of-scots/
This is super interesting - possible scoreboard for a Mayan ballgame found:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-65250018
Cyrilic inscription from the time of Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria (died in 927) found https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/1100-year-old-breastplate-to-ward-off-evil-may-contain-the-oldest-cyrillic-writing-ever-found
Ooh, that's neat!
Two of my favourite things from the Vienna Schatzkammer, which I visited with a friend yesterday evening:
(https://i.imgur.com/tAvrslp.jpg) | (https://i.imgur.com/g6u6PBc.jpg) |
Also this creature from the base of a small statue - anyone got any ideas what this is? I have no clue, though I guess it may be a lizard. It was crouching under St. Francis of Assisi.
(https://i.imgur.com/Na663MQ.jpg)
St. Francis' T-shaped walking stick is interesting because it reminds me of the sticks from ancient Greece? You can still buy these now and then in the right village.
Hm, that is interesting. I think I've seen similar for older walking sticks in the UK, I guess the T-shape with a hand rest makes a lot of design sense but it'd be an interesting thing to trace through the centuries.
The Great Ship of Snargate, Kent http://www.ianfriel.co.uk/the-great-ship-of-snargate/
Ooh, I did not know about this - thanks for posting!
For a long time there has been an argument whether the Clovis Culture were the first humans in the Americas. As a non specialists it seems very partisan and motivated with defenders of Clovis getting increasingly desperate because if they accept one piece of evidence as "maybe" then it will get hard to dismiss the next as "unprecedented." (Although some of the alternative theories are pretty dodgy too). Ordinary people in Iron Age Ireland are basically invisible to archaeologists, it must be even harder to spot people ten times as old who did not have copper or draft animals.
Ars Technica has a piece on some of the latest evidence, carbon-dated human footprints at the White Sands missile range in the USA https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/theres-more-evidence-that-people-walked-at-white-sands-23000-years-ago/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67755415
This is immensely clever and very exciting work - using tooth remains to analyse diet over time, so you can actually prove that, as in this case, someone of Sarmatian ancestry found buried in Roman era Britain didn't just have ancestors from abroad but actually travelled and thus changed grains and diet during his lifetime.
I think some historical DNA/science work can end up being reductive because people want to categorise too much by what they find (or read DNA into social categories it doesn't reflect) but this sort of work I think does show some really interesting potential in unlocking some evidence of people's life stories etc.
So I may have spent almost 4 and a half hours today watching a single absurdly long episode of the Joe Rogan podcast where Graham Hancock was pitted against an actual archaeologist called Flint Dibble. It was interesting stuff, kind of a shame that Hancock was there though tbh because he spent most of his time whining about how mean archaeologists have been to him by challenging his ideas instead bringing up any facts or real argument.
Not really anything new for actual archaeologists but it was very cool to learn about the genetic changes in early domesticated crops and how they seem to occur without selective breeding by humans, they actually appear to be a function of natural selection with humans accidently applying the selection pressures. Very cooool.
Was also interesting to see how Dibble engaged in this debate and how easily grifters like Hancock can be exposed when an expert takes the time to prepare for and engage with a lil well reasoned education and a touch of meme magic.
I've seen some of Flint Dibble's stuff on social media. He does seem like the kind of person one needs for that job.
I think most academics, and I don't know if they're wrong about this, shy away from that sort of engagment because it really does need a particular set of skills. Like, you need to be carrying a very wide arsenal of facts with you because it's so easy for someone to shoot out some bit of information you didn't know and, when you're in a live interview, it's much harder to look up some citations for why they're wrong. I think that's the thing that would terrify me about doing that sort of thing: I'd like to be the sort of person who could do it, but I worry I'd flail when people started shooting facts at me about things I know I don't truly know well enough to contradict them (because the "pop culture knowledge of the past" stuff is so much broader than most individual academics actually look at, myself included and I'm a relatively broad-brush historian).
Yeah he did a very good job, despite seeming to be quite uncomfortable a lot of the time. Kudos to him, I hope he goes back on JRE at some point without Hancock so he can talk more about his own research and expertise.
People criticise Rogan a lot for having conspiracy theorist types on his show, but to be fair to him he actually does try to host these types of debates at times and he is genuinely willing to change his beliefs when someone who actually knows what they're talking about explains what the "mainstream narrative" actually is and how it works. I think that is a very valuable thing, and fortunately this appeared to be one of those times.
Historian and philologist A.J. West has a new blog on post-Columbian South America (and why he could not pursue an academic career after his PhD) https://medium.com/@WestsWorld/why-im-now-writing-about-south-america-f2ce0506ce6d
Yeah, that sounds largely a familiar story :/ I'm looking forward to reading whatever S America stuff he comes up with though.
Thought this was interesting, an article about the first recorded virtual meeting, a telephone-based conference across multiple US cities held in 1916!
https://spectrum.ieee.org/virtual-meeting
Ancient Egyptian mummies still smell nice apparently! So that's nice for them?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crr0ypp84x9o