Ancient History

Younger Dryas Cold Snap

One of the joys about cutting-edge studies that merge scientific data with the discipline of history is the chance to answer questions that we never thought we’d be able to. This photo of Greenland’s ice sheet gets at the way that climate scientists are trying to understand one of the most transformative aspects of earth […]

Younger Dryas Cold Snap Read More »

Elagabalus

The Roman Emperor Elagabalus and Trans-History

The interwebs are all a-flutter this week over the pronoun identification of this Roman emperor, Elagabalus, né Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. The given name is confusing enough, being a pastiche of other famous Ancients, but historians are more confounded by other aspects of Elagabalus. As an article from last week’s _Guardian_ put it: “Was Roman emperor

The Roman Emperor Elagabalus and Trans-History Read More »

Roman Ruins at Province

In Province, France, some amazing ruins from Ancient Rome provide testimony to the wealth and engineering skills the empire’s elites commanded. The Pont-du-Gard still exists as part of the once-enormous aqueduct that brought water 50 kilometers away into the town of Nîmes. Built around 50 CE, it had to have an extremely low gradient to

Roman Ruins at Province Read More »

Romanesque Architecture in Village of Chambonas

Romanesque architecture (dating from about 1050 on) is my favorite style of them all. Romanesque buildings are rare, their interiors are shadowed and their stone heaviness is evocative and mysterious, and the sculptures are whimsical. The latter quality is clearly evident in a tiny church from the 13th century Ardeche village of Chambonas. This church,

Romanesque Architecture in Village of Chambonas Read More »

The Phaistos Disk

The Phaistos Disk

The Phaistos Disk has resisted scholarly attempts at translation for over a century, illustrating the ways that cryptography operates exactly the opposite of the “Indiana Jones” method: no flash of laterally thinking insight will work here. Dating from about 1700 BCE, the Phaistos Disk was found on the Island of Crete, and is made of

The Phaistos Disk Read More »

The Cairo Toe

Behold the Cairo Toe, the earliest surviving prosthesis ever made. About 3,000 years ago in an Ancient Egyptian chamber lying west of Luxor, Egypt, a high-status woman was buried, and accompanying her remains was an artificial big toe made of leather and wood to fill in for a missing digit. The site was at Sheikh

The Cairo Toe Read More »

Cultural Exchange between Ancient Rome and Ancient India

Cultural Exchange between Ancient Rome and Ancient India

At first glance, these small statuettes seem to have little in common with each other. The one on the left is an Ancient Roman copy of Poseidon from the first or second century, originally made by the Greek artist Lysippos in the 3rd century BCE. The one on the right is a sandstone carving of

Cultural Exchange between Ancient Rome and Ancient India Read More »

Meadowcroft Rockshelter

Today (September 16, 2023) several students from Shippensburg University’s history department travelled with Dr. John Bloom and me to the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, an American Indian site in eastern Pennsylvania. The first slides you see come from the sandstone overhang that made a natural roof for the Meadowcroft encampment, as well as the main area

Meadowcroft Rockshelter Read More »

Roman Sphinx

The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art has a fantastic exhibition on the color of Ancient Greek statues right now. When we look at the statues of the Ancient Mediterranean today, we are familiar with the unadorned stone or bronze, like the sphinx from about 530 BCE featured here. However, a team of art

Roman Sphinx Read More »

Pre-History Lactose Tolerance

These figures painted in the Manda Guéli Cave in central Africa in prehistoric times show humans amidst animals they have domesticated. They illustrate the importance of pastoralism in human history, which isn’t just something that changed some people’s food supply (instead of foraged plants and animals, pastoralists focus on the nutrients from their domesticated beasts).

Pre-History Lactose Tolerance Read More »