“Humor is just another defense against the universe,” quipped the great Mel Brooks, and the great comedian’s sentiments extend far back in recorded history. I like thinking about how long humans have been teasing, cracking jokes, and finding play with the absurd. The general scholarly consensus is that the oldest written joke goes back to […]
First Humor from Hierocles and Philagrius Read More »
The lunar crater you see here is Aristarchus, and we’re not going to be be able to get any closer than that to an accurate portrait of the eponymous Ancient Greek astronomer because most of his writings — as well as any contemporary sculpture or paintings of the man — are lost to the sands
Aristarchus’s Model of the Universe Read More »
The northeast part of Africa fascinates me: the history is so rich, but many places I’d like to go aren’t accessible. Take the Kassala region of eastern Sudan, for instance — the first and second images show breathtaking mountains overlooking an off-planet like desert scene. These images also get at the ancient past of the
Beja Nomadic Peoples Burials Read More »
This is a shitty post. Really, because it is about the first flushing toilet, which is one of my favorite human inventions ever and one which should never be taken for granted. You see here the “Queen’s Palace” of the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete (@2000 BCE). The top photo is a very renovated section of
Flushing Toilets of History Read More »
Lots of animals love to play — many of us mammals will forgo food and sleep just to take part in exploratory fun. Humans have excelled at a specific type of play that comes in the form of games.Games are more formal than most types of play. They involve rules and have uncertain outcomes .
Ancient Chinese Board Game “Go” Read More »
These two images reflect the ancient Colorado peoples, who lived as the earliest nomads of the region. Some exciting research from this area is challenging entrenched ideas about how our human ancestors lived.The mammoth skeleton is from the very first peoples, known as the Paleoindians. Dating as far back as 13,000 years ago, archaeologists have
Ancient Colorado Peoples Read More »
Most of us cherish the beauty of wilderness, and I venture that a lot of our feelings come from our knowledge that humans have put the environment in great danger — therefore, any non-human engineered landscapes we now consider especially precious.But people have not always looked at the non-human world in the same way: although
The Beauty of Ancient Roman Wilderness Read More »
Everything has a history, including menstruation. Shown here is rock art from Western Australia’s indigenous peoples depicting two women dancing and menstruating.The cultural history of how societies have dealt with women’s menses is fascinating, but so too is the research done by evolutionary biologists. We have not all experienced periods in the same way throughout
Ancient Menstruation History Read More »
Behold the Wonderwerk cave in South Africa, yet another place on my travel bucket list and also an archaeological site giving evidence for one of the most important inventions humans ever came up with: cooking.Ashes and bone fragments from Wonderwerk have been found from a million years ago, suggesting that our distant relatives, Homo Erectus,
Wonderwerk Cave of South Africa Read More »
One of the best things about studying history is that it has the potential to make one’s day just a little bit better because The Past had so many shitty components. For instance, there’s a fairly good chance that if you are reading this, you are not dealing with head lice.Lice are just enough of
Lice Combs Through History Read More »
Here you see a picture of Achilles making sacrifices to Zeus. It is a unique image, coming from a 5th-century CE manuscript thought to be the only one from Antiquity illustrating Homer’s epic poem _The Illiad_. The scarcity of such depictions belies the importance of Homer on Ancient Roman culture, because all educated people would
Homer and Christianity Read More »
Nine months ago (November 2020), archaeologists excavating a part of the Ancient Roman city of Pompeii found themselves in a rare Indiana Jones-esque situation. In a fancy villa to the north of the city, along this corridor, lay the burnt encasements of these two bodies.Figuring out what these two were doing in that fateful eruption
Pompeii and Social Hierarchy Read More »
The Ancient Romans had a litany of holidays for all sorts of occasions. Every August 23 were the Vulcanalia, festivities honoring the Roman deity Vulcan, featured here in this palm-sized bronze relief from the 2nd or 3rd century CE.Worship of Vulcan shows the way that Romans often bifurcated their attitudes towards their deities. Vulcan was
Ancient Roman Vulcanalia Festivities Read More »
The news of climate-deniers and people who think the COVID vaccine is a government plot can be hard to hear: how are these folks coming up with such ideas? (wait — maybe don’t answer that). The truth is, history is laden with people who have gravely misunderstood cause and effect, with sometimes horrifying consequences.Take the
Cause and Effect and Child Sacrifice? Read More »
I’ve got Troy on my mind lately, and thought I would do a post about the ancient city and the legendary war for which it is most famous. Located in modern-day Hisarlik, Turkey, the city of Troy was an actual inhabited place that got its start about 3600 BCE. Famously excavated by the German businessman
The Ancient City of Troy Read More »
Time for an amusing Ancient Greek philosophers anecdote. This one is about the clash between Diogenes of Sinope (d 323 BCE) and the famed Athenian philosopher Plato.According to Diogenes Laëtius (no relation – he lived about 500 years after but preserved ancient sources), Plato had defined men as featherless bipeds. This provoked the OG Diogenes
Clash of Diogenes of Sinope and Plato of Athens Read More »
*some* people get excited about the fall equinox because of pumpkin spice profusion. *I* get excited because I get to start celebrating Halloween with my thematic Instagram posts!And today I am thinking about Ancient Roman ghosts, which is a complicated subject because Romans had a variety of overlapping ideas about existence beyond the grave. Ancestor
Ancient Roman Ghosts Read More »
You are looking at one of Ancient Rome’s worst enemies, the ruler of the wealthy Kingdom of Pontus in Asia Minor, Mithridates the Great, aka Mithridates VI Eupator (135-63 BCE). He took the Roman empire into wars that exposed the weaknesses of the Republic, which collapsed in cataclysmic civil wars in just a generation after
Mithridates the Great and the Massacre of 88 BCE Read More »
This Ancient scientist was championed by intellectuals across time, and by the 1600s was known in Europe as one of the most important alchemists of Ancient history: Cleopatra “Chrysopoeia” the Alchemist (aka not the Pharaoh). Thought to have been active in the third century BCE, Cleopatra was praised in the early 1600s as being one
Cleopatra the Alchemist Read More »
Behold an example of a fabled Griffin claw, said to neutralize poisons and once collected as prized objects by Medieval kings. The upper image is of a purported Griffin claw, with a silver band inscribed with the Latin: “GRYPHI UNGUIS DIVO CUTHBERTO DUNELMENSI SACER” (“the claw of a Griffin sacred to the blessed Cuthbert of
Medieval Griffin Claw Read More »
