An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
Posted in history & archaeology on Feb 7th, 2010
From the Guardian: Founders of British obstetrics ‘were callous murderers’.
They are giants of medicine, pioneers of the care that women receive during childbirth and were the founding fathers of obstetrics. The names of William Hunter and William Smellie still inspire respect among today’s doctors, more than 250 years since they made their contributions to healthcare. [...]
Posted in history & archaeology, religion on Jan 1st, 2010
From the Telegraph: Vatican reveals Secret Archives.
A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan’s grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican’s Secret Archives that has been published for the first time.
The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.
High-quality reproductions [...]
Posted in environment, food, history & archaeology on Dec 18th, 2009
From Hurriyet Daily NewsAncient seed sprouts plant from the past.
A 4,000-year-old lentil seed found during an archeological excavation has germinated, exciting scientists as the event might lead to invaluable data for comparisons between the organic and genetically engineered plants of today. It would be the first seed from very old times whose genes were never [...]
Posted in Canada, history & archaeology on Dec 18th, 2009
From Canada.com: Soup can yields details on doomed 19th-century Arctic expedition.
Scientists studying a 160-year-old can of soup found in the Canadian Arctic have detected lead levels in its broth and sealant that are off the scale — further evidence, they say, of the lead poisoning believed to have doomed the 19th-century Franklin Expedition during its [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Dec 18th, 2009
From the Guardian: Bones find from abandoned village ’show tough life of medieval women’.
The fearsome northern woman of legend and cliche, broadchested and with a frying pan poised to whack sense into her man, has proved to have genuine historic origins.
Analysis of bones from Britain’s biggest medieval excavation has unearthed a race of real-life Nora [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Dec 10th, 2009
From New Scientist: Ancient Amazon civilisation laid bare by felled forest.
Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil’s border with Bolivia.
The traditional view is that [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Dec 4th, 2009
From the BBC: Crofter finds a ‘Viking’ anchor on the Isle of Skye.
A crofter has uncovered what is believed to be a Viking anchor while digging a drain on the Isle of Skye.[continue, see photo]
Posted in Canada, history & archaeology on Nov 28th, 2009
From The Ottawa Citizen: Ancient camp unearthed.
A team of archeologists working for the City of Ottawa has uncovered the oldest aboriginal camp yet found within the city limits, including stone tools and pieces of artfully decorated pottery dating from 300 BC to 700 AD.
Archeologists believe that the camp on the Rideau River was used periodically [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Sep 25th, 2009
From the Telegraph: Anglo-Saxon hoard is ‘unprecedented’.
The Staffordshire Hoard is by some distance the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, in terms of both the number of items (over 1,300) and the total mass (around 5kg of gold, and 1.3kg of silver).
The majority of the finds are fragments of decorative fittings from swords or [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, history & archaeology, strange stuff on Sep 24th, 2009
From Wired: 1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth.
A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Aug 7th, 2009
From the Telegraph: Two thousand year-old remains of Emperor Vespasian’s house discovered.
A team of British and Italian archaeologists have discovered the remains of a lavish villa belonging to the emperor Vespasian, exactly 2,000 years after his birth.
The archaeologists have unearthed reception rooms, colonnades, mosaic floors and traces of a hot bath complex at a site [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Aug 4th, 2009
From the Financial Times: The history of the Times New Roman typeface.
In his apartment overlooking the fishing docks of Portland, Maine, Mike Parker was putting the final touches to a font, thinning a few obstinate serifs and thickening some delicate stems. The typeface he was working on was instantly recognisable, even to those with no [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jul 18th, 2009
From Reuters: Vinland Map of America no forgery, expert says.
The 15th century Vinland Map, the first known map to show part of America before explorer Christopher Columbus landed on the continent, is almost certainly genuine, a Danish expert said Friday.
Controversy has swirled around the map since it came to light in the 1950s, many scholars [...]
Posted in books & lit, history & archaeology, religion on Jul 6th, 2009
From The Independent: World’s oldest bible published in full online.
The oldest bible in the world was displayed in its entirety for the first time in 150 years today after researchers digitised its four sections kept in cities thousands of miles apart and placed the reunited text in cyberspace.
The Codex Sinaiticus, which was written some 1,600 [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jul 4th, 2009
From culture24.org: Experts hold summit to unravel mystery of rebel Roman fortress in Norfolk.
Last week (June 25 2009) a summit was held at the University of Nottingham to discuss new revelations on the mysterious Norfolk town of Caistor St Edmund.
A buried Roman province which caused sensation when RAF pictures of the site appeared on the [...]
Posted in DNA, history & archaeology on Jul 3rd, 2009
From ansa.it: No Etruscan link to modern Tuscans.
The current population of Tuscany is not descended from the Etruscans, the people that lived in the region during the Bronze Age, a new Italian study has shown.
Researchers at the universities of Florence, Ferrara, Pisa, Venice and Parma discovered the genealogical discontinuity by testing samples of mitochondrial DNA [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jul 2nd, 2009
From smithsonian.com: Via Aurelia: The Roman Empire’s Lost Highway.
At first glance, it didn’t appear that impressive: a worn limestone pillar, six feet high and two feet wide, standing slightly askew beside a country road near the village of Pélissanne in southern France. A lot of people pass by without knowing what it is, Bruno Tassan, [...]
Posted in art, history & archaeology on Jul 1st, 2009
From the Telegraph: Michelangelo signed fresco with self-portrait.
Restorers claim that a bearded man wearing a blue turban in the Crucifixion of St Peter bears a striking resemblance to portraits and bronze busts of the artist.
It’s an extraordinary and moving discovery, said the Vatican’s chief restorer, Maurizio De Luca. The self-portrait is one of three knights [...]
Posted in art, history & archaeology, technology on Jun 30th, 2009
From physorg.com: Computer recognises archaeological material and fake Van Goghs.
People find it very easy to recognise a face, even under very different circumstances. For a computer, on the other hand, it is extremely difficult. Dutch researcher Laurens van der Maaten has developed a new analytical technique which enables the computer to better interpret the content [...]
Posted in history & archaeology, religion on Jun 29th, 2009
From Reuters: Rome catacomb reveals oldest image of St Paul.
Vatican archaeologists using laser technology have discovered what they believe is the oldest image in existence of St Paul the Apostle, dating from the late 4th century, on the walls of catacomb beneath Rome.
Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, revealing the find on Sunday, published a picture of [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jun 28th, 2009
From discovery.com: Models of Earliest (Camel-Pulled) Vehicles Found.
Some of the world’s first farmers may have sped around in two-wheeled carts pulled by camels and bulls, suggests a new analysis on tiny models of these carts that date to 6,000-5,000 years ago.
The cart models, which may have been ritual objects or children’s toys, were found at [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jun 27th, 2009
From the Telegraph: First Europeans were cannibals with taste for children.
Early Europeans were cannibals with a particular taste for the flesh of children, archaeologists have claimed.
The claim has come after bones of the ancestors of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens who first settled in Europe around 800,000 years ago were unearthed in the Atapuerca caves in [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jun 27th, 2009
From the Wall Street Journal: A New Way to See Ancient Athens.
As building locations go, it is unmatched. What could present more of a challenge than to design a major new structure to stand at the foot of the Acropolis, revered as one of the great architectural achievements of western civilization.
That new structure is the [...]
Posted in history & archaeology, music on Jun 25th, 2009
From the New York Times: Flutes Offer Clues to Stone-Age Music.
At least 35,000 years ago, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were also carving the oldest known examples of figurative art in [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Jun 21st, 2009
From the Jerusalem Post: Huge Roman-era cave found by Jericho.
An artificial underground cave, the largest of its kind in Israel, was discovered in the Jordan Valley during excavations by the Haifa University’s Department of Archaeology.
Prof. Adam Zertal, who headed the dig, assessed that the cave was used as a quarry in the Roman era. Various [...]